Arlington residents continue tornado cleanup with city’s help

ARLINGTON, Texas - Some Arlington homeowners are tackling the daunting task of tornado recovery.

Last week's EF-2 tornado ripped down fences and trees and left tons of debris scattered through neighborhoods near East Pioneer Parkway and Collins.

Now, the city is taking steps to help property owners get things cleaned up.

The highest concentration of Arlington tornado victims lived in several Arlington apartment complexes. However, the city wants to also help affected homeowners.

“All we can respond to is what we are made aware of,” said Arlington Emergency Management Administrator Irish Hancock. “We've driven through all the neighborhoods and we've done multiple damage assessments trying to gauge how widespread this incident was.”

Dumpsters are located throughout the corridor where the EF-2 twister touched down on Nov. 24. The hope is to ease the effort for property owners to get rid of tornado debris.

“If the debris is up on the property, the city is not allowed to go onto the property to retrieve the debris,” Hancock said. “So it’s up to the homeowners to get it to the curb so the city can pick it up and dispose of it properly.”

Since the clean-up began, 400 tons of storm debris have been dropped off at the city landfill.

Another behind the scenes effort, the city is expediting requests for construction permits for tornado-related repairs.

“If a citizen is needing to have obviously to restore the property back to pre-disaster state, the city is willing to expedite those permit requests to ensure those homeowners can get back to normal as quickly as possible,” Hancock explained.

In the meantime, the apartment complexes continue to relocate families while city partners, the Red Cross and Mission Arlington individually connect them with goods and services.

The city of Arlington has a phone number for its storm action center. Anyone who needs to report damage or has questions or concerns about recovery should call (817) 459-6777.