By: Diane Benjamin
This meeting was held in response to the damage caused by the tornado that hit Bloomington on April 17th. Just hit play to see some pictures, most I haven’t seen in the media. Slides are included showing the 911 and non-emergency calls during and after the storm. No injuries or deaths have been reported.
The Council passed a local disaster emergency ordinance. Bloomington wants damage reported so the City can determine if the area qualifies for State or Federal assistance.
Residents report here: https://veoci.com/v/p/form/99zytxjzcdky?c=346309
Businesses report here: https://survey123.arcgis.com/share/fb4e9c048835436bb00bcd83429b9b12
The current plan is to have all the curb piles cleaned up by May 1st. Residents parking on the street are urged to stay 10 feet away from deprise because it makes pickup difficult.
Reference was made to Silver Maple trees on public property. Evidently they took heavy damage in parks and other City property. The City quit planting them years ago because they damage the sewer system.
One has to wonder how many $$$ were wasted by the City of Bloomington when they bought the property on the Shirley Rd near south Morris Ave. where the new animal shelter is to plant trees to plant in the city. I believe that was under the sewer and reclamation dept. It looks like to me very few if any were taken for that over the years since they started that project under Hale’s I believe. Now they appear to be too big to be moved with a tree spade. I know there is a trunk diameter limit for a tree spade. Apparently the tree planting program isn’t using them. What are they doing buying new trees? More wasteful spending? Great forest the city owns there.
I was not impressed at all by Ameren’s reponse to restore electricity. I know numerous east side businesses were out Saturday and probably part of Sunday morning. I saw other outside the area service vehicles Sunday.
I kept watching the Ameren outage map and I saw an outage near Heyworth reported at near 1:30 am
repaired by 6 am and in my area the outage was report at 9:30 pm Friday and not restored until around 3 pm Sat. Who pulled rank to get the Heyworth outage fix first I want to know? Both areas had about the same number of customers. I know in my area it was just a downed line. Ameren mismanagement is what I call it.