BROOKINGS, S.D. (KELO) – People across eastern South Dakota are picking up the debris left behind by Thursday’s deadly storms. That includes Brookings where trees and branches line the streets.
Just outside of Brookings along Medary Avenue sits Good Roots Farm and Gardens. There wasn’t much damage here, but the storm did impact planting.
“We were delayed by the cold, extended Spring or Winter or whatever that was called. I didn’t see a Spring and so we were delayed with that and now I think we’re going, some plants have survived, but I’m basically going to start over,” Bill Ross, owner of Good Roots Farm and Gardens, said.
Cleaning up trees, fixing the greenhouse and replacing shingles are projects that the owners expect to last all summer.
“We had wonderful friends and families who, just within a day or two, came and volunteered to help and checked on us and so we love the community that we’re in,” Julie Ross, owner of Good Rots Farm and Gardens said.
Within the city of Brookings, crews are still working to clean up trees and branches that have been placed along the streets around town.
“We’ve also opened up our Brookings Regional Landfill for free dumping for Brookings County residents to bring out their storm debris. We have our Citizen’s Campus that’s also available for Brookings County residents to bring their trees and downed debris of that nature as well,” Jacob Meshke, Brookings Assistant City Manager, said.
The city set up an online tracker so residents can see what areas have been cleaned. They hope cleanup crews will be done by the end of the week.
“You know, listening to some of the other cities that got hit by this storm also, we should consider ourselves relatively fortunate. We didn’t have a lot of damage. What is, you know, trees are replaceable; people aren’t,” Mayor Ope Niemeyer said.
The mayor says all of the power within the city was back on by Friday night. However, Brookings County is still reporting some outages.