Blog: City Blog

Public Service Crews Help Tornado-torn Chattanooga Neighborhood

Equipment Operator II David Ketterman was one of 14 City Public Service employees who helped Chattanooga recover after an April tornado.

As they were doing their jobs, the City of Knoxville boom truck and chain saw operators were being thanked by Chattanooga families.

Dispatched to help the Drake Forest neighborhood climb out of the debris from a mid-April tornado, the two Public Service Department crews picked up 1.8 million pounds of felled trees and woody debris in just nine days.

The first crew - four boom truck operators, two employees with chain saws and a supervisor - arrived in Drake Forest on April 15 and worked four days straight. A second crew picked up where the first left off, providing another five days of intensive labor.

"The damage was pretty amazing," says Public Service Director Chad Weth. "The pictures don't do it justice; there's hardly a tree still standing in that neighborhood.

"To give you a comparison, Drake Forest is about the size of Westmoreland here in Knoxville. The volume of woody debris that our crews collected in that one Chattanooga neighborhood was about 900 tons. Citywide, we collect about 25,000 tons of brush in Knoxville over the course of a whole year. So these 14 employees picked up the equivalent of about 4 percent of our citywide total in just nine days.

"To tell you that the residents there, recovering after a disaster, were grateful - that'd be an understatement. We're all very proud of the great work and selflessness of our employees."

City crews picked up 1.8 million pounds of downed trees and woody debris following an April tornado in Chattanooga.

Posted by evreeland On 07 May, 2020 at 1:30 PM