Officials say a lack of clear communication and a delay in state and federal disaster declarations led to upset residents when the city came to clean up yards following the Father’s Day severe storm.
On Aug. 28, the city started removing dangerous limbs and trees in public rights-of-way in response to the June storm that brought high winds and knocked out power for thousands of Tulsans.
The cleaning effort was announced through a news release three days earlier.
While councilor Phil Lakin said media outlets could have pushed the message more, he also said many people don’t know that a right-of-way is the part of their front yard that lines the street.
"Maybe three or four weeks ago, I started getting bombarded by questions coming from some of my residents relating to, 'Why are there people in my yard cutting my limbs?'"
Lakin said emails from residents who were surprised and upset about the efforts went "on and on." He said homeowners rightfully might take personally the cutting down of trees they planted.
City Public Works Director Terry Ball said FEMA is reimbursing the city for each tree deemed a danger that's removed from a right-of-way. He said homeowners would otherwise get fined by the city if a tree started dropping limbs or fell over because it was killed or damaged in the storm and not removed.
Councilor Laura Bellis said she would have liked this information to relay to residents in her district.
“They go, ‘Why’s the whole tree gone? It looked fine to me.’ And I haven’t been able to relay to someone why that would happen," she said.
Ball also said the cleanup couldn’t get in full swing until July 19 — more than a month after the actual storm — because of how long it took FEMA to give Tulsa the disaster declaration. Thus, the cleanup efforts were left to local and state agencies.
Ball called the wait time for the declaration "highly unusual." A FEMA spokesperson told Public Radio Tulsa her agency was still assessing damage on July 18, the day before Tulsa got the declaration.
“Closer to the storm, people expected things like this to happen. I think this many months out from it, it may be surprising," Bellis said.
Lakin acknowledged the city was operating in the aftermath of a disaster, but also said city councilors could have formed a better communication plan beforehand.
“We know surprises are never good. I didn’t like being surprised by it; I don’t like my residents that I represent being surprised by it," Lakin said.
“We’ll do a ‘lessons learned’ after this. There are some things that we know that we would do different," Ball said.
As of Oct. 23, the city has removed 40,492 limbs and 682 trees from right-of-ways. Ball said the city is expected to finish these cleanup efforts sometime next week.
