Everybody thinks about storm debris afterwards. Marion County runs collection after a named storm, the trucks come through, and vegetation goes.
That is the wrong half of the problem, and it is the half that is already handled.
The dangerous pile is the one already there
The pile of fence panels behind the shed. The old patio set with the glass top. The stack of plywood from a project that finished in March. The half-collapsed gazebo.
In ordinary weather that is untidy. At eighty miles an hour it is a collection of objects moving towards your windows and your neighbour's, and it is the part of your yard nobody thinks of as debris until it has been through the air.
September and October are the busiest weeks of a Florida hurricane season. The quiet stretch before one is named is the whole opportunity.
What the county collection will not do for you
Post-storm collection is for vegetative debris — the limbs and the trees. It is not a free clearance of everything that ended up on your lawn.
Construction material, furniture, appliances, fencing and anything with a manufactured part are generally not what those crews are for, and separating a pile after the fact is much harder than not mixing it in the first place. If your fence went down and your oak went down and they are now one pile, you have made a job for yourself.
The window closes when a storm is named
This is the part worth being blunt about. In the week after a system is named and pointed at Florida, everybody in the county wants the same thing at the same time, and nobody local has capacity. That is not a sales line — it is what happens every year, to every hauler here.
A Saturday in a quiet August is a completely different proposition from the Tuesday after a warning goes up.
What we would take now
- Old fence panels and posts, stacked or fallen
- Patio furniture that has stopped being furniture
- Leftover building material from a finished job
- Sheds and gazebos that are already half down — that is small demolition, and we do that
- Yard debris you have already cut but never moved
And afterwards, if it comes to that
If a storm does come through, keep the vegetation separate at the kerb so the county trucks can take what they are there for. Call us for the rest — the fence, the soaked furniture, the contents of a garage that took water.
We work weekends, which after a storm is usually when people finally have a day to deal with it.