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Community Corner

On the Road to Recovery

The Prospect Park Alliance continues repairing grounds and looking for funding following September's tornado

Brooklyn might be only just recovering from 2010's post-Christmas blizzard, but three months after a tornado tore through the northern region of Brooklyn's Prospect Park, the park's management still continues to work at putting the pieces back together.

Anne Wong, the park's director of landscape management, said that while a majority of the damage caused by the September storm has been cleaned up, the recovery effort is far from over.

"We still have 57 trees that need to be removed," she said. "We have a lot of trees where more than half of the branches came off and those trees need to be removed."

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The storm with recorded winds of 80 MPH felled around 40 trees and severely damaged 150 more in Prospect Park between Grand Army Plaza and the Long Meadow. The current damage estimate including staff overtime devoted to the cleanup, has been reported around $150,000.

Portions of Brooklyn and Queens also suffered significant home damage during the storm and one person was reportedly killed. New York Gov. David Patterson declared a FEMA state of emergency in the area, including Prospect Park, a move Wong called a "lifesaver."

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The declaration enabled the U.S. Forestry Service to deploy their "Cherokee Hotshots," a group of workers deployed to emergencies to assist in clean ups.

The group, along with FEMA funding funneled to New York City's Parks Department, allowed the park to hire contractors to collect and dispose of debris.

Arborists from Brooklyn Forestry, the borough's forestry division managed by the Parks Department, and the parks arborist Luis Lemus are currently working in Prospect Park to combat the unusual level of damage inflicted upon the park's trees.

"The way the storm hit it seemed to do a lot of damage to the upper story of healthy trees. So it wasn't even the older trees that were on their way out," said Eugene Patron, the spokesman for the Prospect Park Alliance.

This type of upper canopy damage can remain undetected to the untrained eye and weaken trees in further storms. Now, Brooklyn Forestry has taken the task of large tree removal while the in-house landscapers handle smaller trimmings.

Another dilemma the park is facing is the looming possibility of invasive tree species following the uprooting of trees.

"Part of the problem is that for next year where you had dense older trees and coverage, you're [now] getting sunlight in kind of a opening," Patron said. "It's not just dealing with the damage but with how you make sure what will come in is what we want to grow."

Wong and the park are gearing up for a seeding plan to replace these downed trees and combat invasive species. While no specifics were in place yet for saplings, Wong said mapping would occur through the winter with trees to be planted in the springtime.

The park's and the city's arborists have worked to clean up the residual and often hidden damage but Patron said contractors could be helpful. Contactors could be used in the park for stump grinding and disposal of tree debris. But at the moment the park doesn't have the necessary cash on hand to hire these companies. That is where FEMA come in.

The future of the recovery, Patron and Wong note, is reliant upon securing funds from FEMA, the city and patron donations.

Recently, Wong and a team of FEMA inspectors toured the damaged areas to assess the possibility of securing further funding. As the park's revival moves forward the work required has changed as well.

While volunteers were critical at the recovery's commencement, work has since shifted away to professionals, said Patron.

"Now, its really more the kind of work that you need skilled arborists in a bucket truck for. People who are trained to climb. Arborists who can tell how badly a tree is damaged," he added.

Even with this continued work both Patron and Wong insisted there is no final end date for the recovery after the loss of trees. As new trees are planted and grow anew only then can the process start filling in the gaps.

"When you lose a favorite 100-year-old tree, you never fully recover from that," said Patron.

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