The Alachua County Public Works Department announces that normal operations will resume on Monday, September 25, 2023, following recovery efforts from Hurricane Idalia. On Wednesday morning, August 30, 2023, Idalia made landfall as a category three hurricane in the Big Bend region of north Florida, approximately 60 miles west of Alachua County.
As part of the Department’s hurricane activation plan, the Road and Bridge Division strategically deployed five crews at local schools around the County so crews could respond quickly to downed trees. The first shift worked Tuesday night as the storm approached the area and into Wednesday morning to keep roadways passable. The second shift came in at 11 a.m. Wednesday morning and worked until 11 p.m. that night to ensure roadways remained open. The northwestern parts of the County appeared to have been the hardest hit by the storm based on the number of trees that fell on County roads.
The day after the storm, the Road and Bridge Division was reorganized and split into two strike teams to respond to the storm’s aftermath. One team focused on picking up the vegetative debris within the County’s right of way, and the other focused on replenishing the County’s sandbag reserves. Both teams completed their task in just under 30 days. More than 150 dump truck loads of vegetative debris were removed from the right of way, and 10,000 sandbags have been filled and are ready for the next storm.
For more information about yard waste and its collection, contact the Alachua County Solid Waste Department at 352-338-3233.
For more information about the Public Works Department’s response to Hurricane Idalia, contact Assistant Public Works Director Brian Kauffman, P.E., at 352-548-1306.
