Monroe County looks to hire contractor to remove tornado debris

MONROE COUNTY, Miss. (WCBI)- It’s been almost a week since two tornadoes touched down in Monroe County.

From shingles to uprooted trees, to personal and basic household items, the deadly storms left debris scattered everywhere.

“The best estimate is going to be 100 to 120,000 tons, which according to MEMA (Mississippi Emergency Management Agency) is about as heavy as they’ve seen in a tornado like this,” said Monroe County Road Manager Sonny Clay.

The storms left behind more than a million dollars worth of damage.

Clay said the rubbish is too much for the county to handle on their own, and they’re now looking to bring in a contractor to haul it away.

“We’re working as we speak to get some requests for proposals sent out,” said Clay. “Our goal is that by the end of next week to have some proposals to go out for contractors to submit bids on. Hopefully, we will be able to take those bids, analyze and go through them, and determine who’s the best qualified, who can do it the quickest and the best.”

However, the county won’t be able to hire a contractor to start working until a declaration is signed by the president, and at this time Clay doesn’t know how long that will take.

“The events that we had last Saturday night is going to be tied in with Warren County, and Oktibbeha County, and I think there were four places in the state that had damage last week, all of that will go in with one declaration to the president,” Clay explained. “We’ve got all of ours together ready to go in. MEMA is working on getting it ready to go to FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) now but my understanding is that it won’t be looked at until these other counties come in.”

In the meantime, the county urged all residents to push their debris to the edge of the road and to be patient as they try to find a solution to get all of the debris cleaned up as soon as possible.

“We’re probably looking at a $4 million contract and Monroe County just doesn’t have $4 million to put out there on a limb without knowing that we’re going to get reimbursed through a presidential declaration,” expressed Clay.

The county’s road manager also expressed that even though they’re waiting on the presidential declaration, they’re still going to go out and try to haul away as much debris as they can.

Clay said they’re plan is to already have a contractor lined up and if the declaration is issued, they’ll have the contracting group come in right away and get everything cleaned up.