It’s easy for residents to become frustrated when they continue to see home after home and pile after pile of debris still on the side of the roads. It almost looks as if nothing is happening. Other residents see their neighbor’s pile picked up while theirs is still sitting in front of their home. Concerns over health issues run rampant. But is it really taking too long for the clean up process to happen and be completed?
In comparison Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner announced on Wednesday the first debris removal phase has been completed. He also commended the hard work of the Solid Waste Management employees and leadership.
For the city of Houston, phase one, which began Aug. 30, provided debris removal service to homeowners who had immediately returned to their homes and began removing flooded furniture, appliances, carpet and sheetrock. It should be known that of the 150,000 homes affected, only 65 percent of residents were able begin cleanup at this stage. The remaining continued to fight floodwaters over the following weeks. Now the city is working to have debris ready for phase two of the pickup process, which is expected to take up to 60 days.
Having severe flooding that affected over 85 percent of the structures in Port Arthur, the majority of residents and business owners were able to get back into their homes and businesses rather quickly to begin the process of cleaning up.
The population of Houston is a little more than 2.3 million. The flooding in Houston covered 33 percent of the city, affecting as many structures. The population of Port Arthur is not even 3 percent the size of Houston. Yet, by taking the size difference into consideration, Port Arthur saw more than two-and-a-half times as many buildings affected per the population.
Over the last six weeks, Houston has collected over 1 million cubic yards of debris, which comes to 6.7 cubic yards per household. Meanwhile, over the past five weeks, Port Arthur Waste Management has removed over 226,000 cubic yards, which is only 23 percent as much as Houston but which equals 12 cubic yards per household. That’s almost twice as much per home in less time.
So I’ll ask the question. Is the cleanup going slow? As compared to what? Rita? Ike? Houston? Harvey was a different type of storm all together. Many are calling it the “Perfect Storm.” It will continue to be called the worst storm our nation has ever seen for quite some time. It affected more lives than any storm prior to it. So how can we set an expectation for something we have not faced before?
With that said, citizens do deserve to have information shared with them regularly as to the time frame it will take to be done and the continual progress being made.
Social media is taking frustrations to a whole new level. False information is being spread like wildfire. Much of this is due to the limited factual information being shared. This ultimately reinforces frustrations and anger.
Under these circumstances, is it frustrating? Absolutely. Are frustrations warranted? Absolutely. But we must continue to be patient and work together. We have months of recovery ahead of us, which won’t end the frustrations anytime soon. But trying to find someone to blame for a situation that was completely unexpected and unprecedented is unrealistic.
Will we learn from this situation? Absolutely. Will we be better prepared if something of this magnitude were to happen again? Absolutely. You know what they say about hindsight. It’s easy to look back now and think we should of, would of, could of done this, that and the other differently. Yes, it’s easy to see that now.

Rich Macke is publisher of The Port Arthur News. Contact him at rich.macke@panews.com.