Gustav aftermath: Clearing roads

• By JEREMY HARPER
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Sep 4, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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After Hurricane Gustav slammed their subdivision, a towering wall of downed trees blocked Mandy Cordaro and her family from leaving their property near the Baton Rouge Country Club for two days.

“It’s just kind of suffocating,” Cordaro said. “Days go by and you think, ‘When are they going to come?’ And you just sit here and you wait.”

On Wednesday, a city-parish Department of Public Works crew swept through the neighborhood, cutting and bulldozing the maze of debris that also blocked Fairway Drive in one of the hardest-hit areas in the city.

In less than an hour, the workers, wearing bright-orange overalls, cleared the roadway, which serves as a key route for traffic between Jefferson Highway and Old Hammond Highway.

With that, Cordaro, her husband and her two children were finally free to leave.

“It’s just a relief,” Cordaro said.

Stephen Shurtz, DPW’s urban forestry and landscape manager, said unblocking homes and roadways is a top priority for the city-parish.

He said more than 50 DPW crew members are working up to 16-hour days to remove the debris across the parish and open up roadways for emergency vehicles.

“Our job really is to get the roadways open and safe,” Shurtz said. “We still have a lot of neighborhoods to get through, but we’re trying to get the rough stuff first — the bigger streets, the through street.”

Shurtz said workers finished clearing most of heavily covered Highland Road on Wednesday.

However, a tree blocking an entrance to about 80 lots in a subdivision off the road could not be moved because a downed and apparently live transmission line prevented work in the area. He said Mayor-President Kip Holden asked Entergy to deactivate the line so work can continue.

Shurtz said DPW hopes to have all major roads open and most subdivisions unblocked in the next two days. Once the streets are cleared, Shurtz said, DPW will begin picking up debris that city-parish workers piled on roadsides and medians during road-clearing.

Shurtz said the city-parish is taking bids for its major debris cleanup contract. Once the contract is in place, contractors will go through neighborhoods picking up debris, he said.