Neighbors In Fort Collins Work Together To Clean Up Blizzard Debris
FORT COLLINS, Colo. (CBS4) – Two days after wrapping up a big snowstorm, Fort Collins still looks a little rough around the edges and pudgy with snow in the middle.
"We're not on a bus route so they never plow our street," said Colorado State University graduate Gabriel Hyde.
Hyde and friends along Myrtle Street had been helping people get out. The street showed no signs of plowing.
"If they get stuck it's kind of weird to me to not help."
Around the corner, Mike Key and Adam Derosa hooked up a tree in the street in front of their home and tried to use a Jeep to pull it out of the way of traffic.
"We figured there was plenty for the city to do. It might take them a couple days to get around here."
People have been understanding given the power of the storm. Savannah Encinias is waiting for the city to remove a massive tree limb from on top of her SUV. She fears the damage may be more than the vehicle is worth.
She discovered it when she came out of her apartment after hearing another limb come down on her street.
"I heard like this tree over here go down, and then I saw it so I was like I wonder if my car is by a tree at all so I'm going to move my car if it is and then I came out and I saw, this, tree on it."
The city first cleared main arteries and collector streets, now school and bus routes. Residential plowing comes last.
There are a lot of trees down at CSU. The university inventories its trees. There are 10,000 of them; 1,000 have damage and some smaller trees have been destroyed.
The university says the toll is worse than in an epic storm back in 2003.
The city however has mostly buried power lines. That helped avoid most big outages from falling branches.
Now it's just clean-up time. People are making the best of it. Hyde and his friends were at work on an igloo in their yard.
"We'll probably do something and hang out. Maybe we'll put some lights in here. Maybe we'll even be bold enough to spend the night."
The storm dropped 23 inches of snow on Fort Collins.
