Cleanup From March Storms Ends; More Than 1 Million Cubic Yards of Debris

It took about three months but a four-county cleanup from the ice storms back in March has finally ended.

The state Department of Transportation says it picked up more than 1 million cubic yard of downed limbs as trees between the end of the storms and June 6.

The effort focused on Alamance, Caswell, Guilford and Orange counties. The majority of the debris, 800,000 cubic yards of it, came from Guilford County. A cubic yard would hold about 200 gallons, so the total collected by the DOT translates into about 221 million gallons of debris. 

That's just in areas outside of the cities – Greensboro and High Point had their own collections within their city limits. Brad Wall is a division engineer for the DOT. He says the heaviest damage was in southern Guilford County.

Wall says he appreciates the patience that residents showed during the cleanup. The DOT will no longer be making regular sweeps to pick up debris. 

Damage was so extensive that in the wake of the storm High Point officials relaxed the rules on limb and yard waste disposal. In early May, the city went back to its normal yard waste collection rules.