USACE debris management mission continues in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico
Trucks carrying vegetative debris from Hurricane Maria deposit their loads at the Los Alamos Temporary Debris Reduction Site (TDRS) in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico Jan. 10. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is leading the federal debris management mission as part of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) Hurricane Maria response effort. The USACE mission has collected more than 2 million cubic yards of hurricane debris in Puerto Rico to date. To get a sense of how much vegetative debris was created by Hurricane Maria, Peter Gibson, the USACE debris zone engineer for Zone 2, which includes Guaynabo, said locals told him the greenery before Hurricane Maria was so thick they couldn't see their neighbors. "After the storm hit, everything turned brown and they had a revelation of how many neighbors they had, because they could see them for the first time," he said. "All that debris, all the trees and all those sticks, they wound up on the ground, and they clog everything from roadways to waterways, so that's what we're out here trying to remove."