‘We were blessed:” Nearly 100% of Columbia County cleaned up after Hurricane Idalia

LAKE CITY, Fla. (WCJB) -Columbia County Commissioners say nearly 100% of power outages are restored after Idalia downed power lines and left debris in the roads and many homes without power.

Commissioners voted to bring FEMA-approved contractors to remove all remaining debris in the county.

RELATED: State opens insurance payment centers for residents impacted by Hurricane Idalia

“The purpose of bringing synergy on board is to ensure a monitoring effort,” said Kevin Kirby, assistant county manager. “It’s a third party to ensure that all the rules in these events are followed. It’s to ensure that taxpayers get the best bang for their buck when it relates to reimbursement.”

Kirby said an hour after the storm passed, they got to work by cutting down trees and restoring power to the thousands of homes. Now they’re on to the restoration process.

“We were fortunate we didn’t have erosion but we had a lot of organic debris. We’ve been working round the clock doing that. We were fortunate enough to be declared under FEMA. We are now bringing our contractor services in, they will assist us in building up.”

Commissioners are asking residents to bring the remaining debris from their properties to the public right of way for pickup by September 17th.

“It ensures they have all this week, a weekend, the following week, and another weekend but you have to have a cut off point on some level because if not we’ll be picking up debris for the year to come,” said Kirby.

Starting this weekend, more than 2,000 volunteers from the Church of Latter-Day Saints will help with the restoration process.

The goal, according to Kirby, is to restore Columbia County back to the way it was pre-hurricane Idalia by October 1st.

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