City Of Columbus Moves Forward With Cleaning Up After The Storm

COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI)- The clock is ticking for Columbus residents whose homes were severely damaged in the February tornado.

Last week residents were given a letter to notify the city of their plans to clean up.

Homeowners could either rebuild their home, demolish it themselves, or have the city demolish it for them.

City Code Enforcement Officer, Tomarris Jones said he’ll go out into the neighborhoods this week to check on the progress homeowners are making.

For those who are demolishing their homes, they have 45 days to do so.

For those rebuilding, there’s no set date on when everything has to be rebuilt.

However, Jones said steady progress must be made to the home.

There are still some people the city hasn’t heard from.

Jones said an abatement process will now start.

“That’s where we send out a notice and in the notice we will give them a reasonable amount of time to make contact and let us know their intent, and their plan of action,” said Jones, Code Enforcement Officer. “Then we will proceed with having an abatement hearing before our mayor and council. If they show up at the hearing and have a plan of action, we will work with them on their behalf, but if they don’t then the mayor and council will proceed with giving our public works department permission to go onto their property to demo it and cleaned it off.”

This is only for property owners whose homes are deemed unfit to live in.

Jones said the city sent out a total of 27 letters and heard back from 19 of the people.

Categories: Local News

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