DAUPHIN COUNTY, Pa. — Families in Dauphin County continue to recover after a National Weather Service-confirmed EF-1 tornado blew through several communities on Friday, leaving a lot of damage and debris.
According to the City of Harrisburg, their Public Works Department is working 12 to 16 hour days to clean up the Bellevue Park neighborhood and other affected areas. They’ll continue this clean-up effort throughout this week.
Harrisburg Bureau of Fire chief Brian Enterline shared that some of the trees in Bellevue Park are well over 100 years old and eight feet in diameter, but as a result of the storm, they were “just uprooted and thrown like pencils, quite honestly.”
Enterline explained 111 properties sustained damage around the Harrisburg area.
Streetlights and roads also saw damage from the storm, and the City says their preliminary damage estimates are the following:
- $150,000 for debris removal
- $100,000 in road repairs
- $167,000 in utility damages to street lights/poles
At this time, the City says it's still working on calculating damages seen in Dauphin County, not including homeowner damage, to see if the overall cost reaches the $1.33 million threshold needed in order to declare it an emergency and receive federal funding.
If you have a lot of debris on your property from last week’s storm, the City encourages you to gather it and leave it on the curb to be picked up.
Or if you are a homeowner and need assistance with the debris, you are encouraged to give written permission to public works director Dave West at DWest@harrisburgpa.gov in order for the department to come on your property and remove debris.