Cleaning up after weekend weather

MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) - Mobile city leaders blame the tight budget for hampering response time to some emergencies created by the heavy rain this weekend.

Mayor Sam Jones told FOX10 News Monday, workers have to scramble to retrieve vehicles, locate working equipment, and figure out how city crews would be paid for working through midnight Sunday.

City officials said work crews have only been able to respond a fraction of the calls that came in over the weekend for downed trees. 

Out of the 45 service requests, the Departments of Urban Development and Public Works only had the manpower to handle eight calls.

Some streets that were blocked by fallen trees Saturday and Sunday weren't cleared until Monday morning.

One 200 year old oak tree fell across Springhill Avenue at Union Saturday.  That street wasn't cleared until close to 11 a.m. Monday.  

Workers were waiting on equipment to remove the trees that fell across Cedars off Springhill Avenue well after noon Monday.

Ciy officials said two bucket trucks like the ones used by utility crews, and two Barco loaders which have huge claws to remove debris were not working.  Urban Development workers were forced to borrow equipment from Public Works, and that has slowed response time. 

FOX10 talked to Mayor Sam Jones and Director of Urban Development Laura Clark about the city's response issues.

"The big problem was that the equipment, on March 8, we went to the council and said, ‘Look, the equipment is completely necessarily to respond to these types of emergencies.’ The council did not act on that. So we still, we still don't have equipment, and we're still in a situation where we think this will be one of the most active storm periods that we've had in Mobile," Mayor Jones said.

"The weather calls that we got, those 45, they'll be receiving priority. I imagine if we get more rain tonight, the ground is still so saturated, we're going to see more trees down," Clark said.

Mayor Jones said changes will have to made so that there is adequate personnel to handle emergencies in the future, but the mayor said it won't help unless the workers have the equipment they need to do the job.  

 Mayor Jones plans to bring that issue up at Tuesday's city council meeting