Veterans help Ohio communities recover from storm damage – Spectrum News

Veterans help Ohio communities recover from storm damage  Spectrum News

Severe weather has impacted communities across Ohio. COLUMBUS, Ohio — Severe weather has affected communities across Ohio, leaving behind damage to homes, trees and property, creating a major cleanup effort for residents. Veterans with Team Rubicon are helping Columbus residents clean up storm damage at no cost, with about 100 volunteers deployed across Ohio and crews coordinating with the city’s emergency management team and 311 requests. The organization said its crews have already helped 45 Columbus families and moved about 1,800 cubic feet of debris, or roughly 13 pickup truckloads. Jim Herrel, who is leading 30 volunteers in Columbus, said crews are seeing extensive tree damage from the recent severe weather. “We’re seeing a lot of tree damage.

Tornadoes tend to blow the trees down and knock them down. It creates kind of a precarious situation because of the twisting of a tornado. It makes it a very difficult and technical cut,” Herrel said. Team Rubicon’s work recently included the backyard of Columbus resident Anisa Ahmad, who turned the space into a community garden. Ahmad said neighbors used the space as nearby homes and apartments don’t have backyards. “Lot of children in the neighborhood and a lot of these homes or apartments don’t even have backyards. So the community garden became their backyard, and they would play here,” Ahmad said.