After clearing a record number of trees from the streets of the Town of Oyster Bay, officials are reporting that most roads are now at least passable after Hurricane Sandy tore through the area.
"We have 1,000 trees still down across the Town," said Department of Public Works Commissioner Justin McCaffrey. "With the exception of a few that are under live wires that LIPA has to take care of, we've been able to clear most trees from the roads so they are passable."
McCaffrey said Massapequa in particular has many trees with live wires trapping them in the street, but that crews had worked day and night to clear them.
"Our workers are good; tired, but good," said McCaffrey of the hundreds of Town employees involved in the "all hands on deck" operation. "We were able to send them home at around 8 p.m. [Wednesday] so they got a little rest and came back this morning."
Newsday reported:
[Town Supervisor John Venditto] said about 400 town employees have about 350 vehicles out working on storm cleanup, working from sunrise to sunset because it's too dangerous to work at night due to downed wires and branches. Most of the work is removing more than 1,000 reported fallen trees, he said.
"That's a new record,” Venditto said. “And it's continuing to climb because we haven’t heard from all areas yet."
McCaffrey said that sanitation operations were coming back into effect, saying, "If you can get it to the curb, we'll remove it."
