City Crews Continue Cleaning Debris From Friday’s Storm

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – You’ve probably heard the saying if you enjoy your job, you’ll never work a day in your life.

But, Tony Gliot isn’t quite so sure about that saying anymore.

“I love everything about my job,” he said. “But this is a bad one for us.”

He’s the Urban Forestry Director for Salt Lake City, and after a storm like the one that blew through town yesterday morning, it’s been a lot of work.

“All of our forestry staff put in a 12-hour day yesterday,” said Gliot.

Hopefully, the city budgeted for lots of overtime.

“We will be working on tree damage from this storm for the rest of the year,” he said.

Crews are still working on getting the largest trees and branches out of the way.

A large branch from a Modesto ash tree was blocking 13th west at about 1000 south forcing the road to be closed.

Workers from a contracted tree removal crew arrived at that spot Saturday morning to start cutting the damaged portions of the tree off.

“It’s on every street in the city,” said Gliot.

Gliot says all the damage is because there has been so much snow this winter.

“It was a perfect timing,” he said while looking at a large downed tree branch. “Trees were drawing up water and becoming heavy to get ready to put out leaves and buds and flowers and you add to that a significant amount of heavy, wet snow and this is the breakage we see.”

Yards needed cleaning up, too.

People were busy cleaning branches out of their front and back yards.

Salt Lake City public utilities will pick up debris, but people will have to take care of their own private property and bring the debris to park strips in front of their homes.

“Residents, just have some patience, and we will get to it,” said Gliot. “Work towards cleaning the city up one street at a time.”

 

It might take a few days, but it’ll get done by those who love their jobs.