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Mayor’s office collects over 100K cubic yards of Yutu debris
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Posted on Feb 05 2019
The Saipan Mayor’s Office collected over 100,000 cubic yards of typhoon debris since the start of the cleanup from the devastation of Super Typhoon Yutu in late October 2018.
According to the mayor’s office official records, between Oct. 26, 2018, which was right after Super Typhoon Yutu ravaged Saipan and Tinian, and Feb. 2, 2019, they have collected 102,404 cubic yards of waste all over Saipan.
The office works six days a week, from Monday to Saturday and collected as much as 1,000 cubic yards of waste daily.
The mayor’s office is in charge of collecting green waste or plants, logs, leaves, and trees; construction debris such as lumber, drywall, plywood, concrete, plumbing, carpets, furniture, broken windows, and mattresses; and metal debris such as tin roofing.
The mayor’s office averaged at least 896.2 cubic yards per day since Oct. 26, 2018.
“We are trying to do as much as we can. We are trying to clean up all the villages,” said Saipan Mayor David M. Apatang. “This is one of the reasons we give the people a deadline to start getting all their debris out for Feb. 10, 2019.”
Apatang reiterated that beyond the Feb. 10, 2019, deadline for Super Typhoon Yutu debris, homeowners will be on their own in terms of getting rid of the waste.
“We are always encouraging our people to clean up so we can do things all at once,” he said. Apatang noted that his office has been working with the Department of Lands and Natural Resources, along with the Bureau of Environmental and Coastal Quality, the Department of Corrections, the Department of Labor, and even the Department of Public Works.
“We continue to ask the people in our community to…work together and try and get rid of all this typhoon debris,” he said.
Joann Aquino, Apatang’s director of field operations, told Saipan Tribune that there are over 100 personnel in the field collecting debris. Fifty are from the mayor’s office, 30 are from the DOL’s Workforce Investment Agency, and at least 20 are from the DOC.
She further noted that there are about 28 heavy equipment vehicles in use. She noted some dump trucks—heavy equipment used for transporting—have capacities ranging from 10 to 30 cubic yards per load. The record for the most loads dumped by a mayor’s office vehicle in one day is 50.
