Lee County collects enough Hurricane Ian debris to fill Hertz Arena 10 times

Samantha Neely, Fort Myers News-Press
·2 min read
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Debris and homes from Gulf Cove Mobile Home Park on San Carlos Island on Fort Myers Beach are cleaned up on Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2022. Hurricane Ian destroyed the area. In the foreground material waving from the wind as Tropical Storm Nicole approaches the East coast of Florida.

Lee County has collected more than 4 million cubic yards of hurricane debris, enough to fill Hertz Arena to the celing 10 and 1/2 times.

Since Sept. 28, crews have worked to clear debris from more than 3,500 miles of Lee County roads. Officials equated that distance to a trip from Fort Myers to Minneapolis and back.

"Specialized debris trucks working continuously in unincorporated Lee County collect more than 60,000 cubic yards of roadside debris each day and move roughly 20,000 cubic yards from debris management sites to final disposal," Lee County officials said in a press release issued Monday.

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By comparison, the county said it had collected over million cubic yards of debris in less than a month after Ian's landfall, including 734,136 cubic yards of vegetation and 285,282 cubic yards of construction and demolition debris.

So how does this compare to clenup efforts after Hurricane Irma five years ago? The county said it removed 1.95 million cubic yards of debris in about four and a half months.

In addition to the vegetative debris and construction and demolition debris collected, crews have cleared:

  • more than 117,000 cubic yards of sand from local roads

  • more than 2,360 cubic yards of vegetative and structural debris from waterways.

  • Sand cleared from roadways is screened of debris and other contaminants and returned to local beaches. To date, roughly 73,000 cubic yards, or 62% of the collected sand, has been returned to beaches.

Officials said crews will continue to collect hurricane debris, as well as provide each neighborhood at minimum a second pass for debris removal. Additional passes will be conducted as warranted, particularly in those neighborhoods that experienced both wind damage and severe flooding.

For residents wanting to track debris collection progress, officials recommend the county’s debris removal information dashboard.

This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Lee County officials collect 4 million cubic yards of debris from Ian