Wilton tornado cleanup: last curbside pickup starts today

Highway crews in Wilton start a final sweep of roadside tornado debris on Monday, Sept. 28, and the dumpsters at Town Hall and Gavin Park stay in place through Wednesday, Sept. 30. Town Supervisor Toni Sturm announced the schedule at a news conference on Thursday, Sept. 24, a month after two tornadoes touched down in the town, according to The Daily Gazette and The Saratogian.

Residents had until the end of the day Sunday to drag brush and branches to the edge of the road. The town has not announced another curbside pickup after this week’s sweep.

What residents need to know this week

The schedule, as the town described it to the two papers, breaks down this way.

• Monday and Tuesday, Sept. 28 and 29: the highway department makes its final sweep of debris placed in the town right-of-way.
• Through Wednesday, Sept. 30: dumpsters remain at Town Hall, 22 Traver Road, and at Gavin Park for residents who haul their own debris.
• The town has written a guide for residents dealing with tree removal companies, insurers and roofers, so they are not taken advantage of, according to The Saratogian. Town Hall can be reached at (518) 587-1939.
• Emergency alerts: the town uses a wireless emergency notification system that residents must sign up for, and Saratoga County’s Code Red system calls landlines automatically but requires residents to register cell phones.

What the storm did

The National Weather Service confirmed two tornadoes in Wilton and Gansevoort on Thursday, Aug. 27. The stronger one reached peak winds of 110 mph and cut a path about 1 3/4 miles long and 250 yards wide, running from Saratoga Springs toward Gansevoort, the Gazette reported. Trees and power lines came down on roads, homes were damaged, and nobody was hurt.

Sturm, who called the storm a “catastrophic and rare weather event” in The Saratogian’s account, declared a state of emergency on Aug. 28. The Saratogian reported that Highway Superintendent Mike Monroe had crews moving within an hour of the touchdown, and the Gazette said crews worked until 1 a.m. and were back at 6 a.m. By last week the highway crew had hauled away more than 1,000 cubic yards of chipped trees and filled at least five 30-yard dumpsters, Sturm told The Saratogian, with a large pile still sitting behind the highway garage on Traver Road.

The storm also knocked out the town’s own ability to talk to residents. Town Hall lost phone service until about noon on Saturday, Aug. 29, and email came back late Friday, Sturm told The Saratogian, which slowed the paperwork needed for the emergency declaration. Within an hour of the storm, town officials were also coordinating with the Saratoga County Sheriff’s Office, State Police and local first responders, and the town sent residents a tornado notice with safety information and early cleanup instructions.

The first week shaped the rest of the month. At an emergency town board meeting the Monday after the storm, residents mostly asked what cleanup help the town would provide, Sturm told The Saratogian, and the dumpsters at Town Hall and Gavin Park came out of that meeting. The town also arranged for the county’s contracted tree service to help with the heaviest work.

The criticism

Not everyone is satisfied with how the month went. Tom Sartin, chairman of the Saratoga County Conservative Committee, told the Gazette the town gave residents conflicting instructions, first telling them to put debris at the road and later directing them to dumpsters at Town Hall and Gavin Park. He also argued the town should have dropped dumpsters in each affected neighborhood.

Sturm answered that the damage was not fully clear until several days in, calling it “an evolving situation,” and said neighborhood dumpsters were ruled out over liability, since children can climb into them or crash into them. She told the Gazette the waste haulers were slow to deliver dumpsters at first and the first ones filled within two days, so the town brought in a third company. Barbara Sherman, whose neighbor’s house was badly damaged, told the Gazette that piles were still sitting along some roads last week.

What the town says it will change

Sturm said the storm exposed problems in the town’s emergency systems that date back years, according to The Saratogian. The fixes she described include the following.

1. A formal disaster debris cleanup policy. Wilton had none, and the advice from highway crews shifted as the scale of the damage became clear.
2. A working group on emergency communication, which will meet internally first, then with local first responders and then with county officials.
3. Practice runs of storm response, so the next cleanup starts with the same instructions for everyone.
4. Work by the town’s Code Revision committee on a policy that sets out who communicates what during different levels of disaster.

Sturm also pushed residents to sign up for the town’s email list and the wireless alert system, noting that neither reaches people automatically. The last tornado to hit Wilton was in 2020, and she said that one landed mostly in woods, while this one came down in a neighborhood of homes. The timing was worse, too. In 2020, during the pandemic shutdown, highway crews had weeks to spend on cleanup; this year the same crews were trying to finish paving projects before cold weather, she said.

Our read: the complaint and the town’s answer agree on one thing, which is that residents did not get one clear set of instructions early. A written debris policy is the cheapest fix on the list and the one residents will notice first if another storm comes through. Watch the town’s meeting agendas this fall for the draft.

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