Bemidji Mayor Discusses City’s Plans for Recovering After Storm

As the Bemidji area continues its recovery and getting life back to normal after the major storm last Saturday, the city is working on assisting residents as much as they can.

Storm cleanup continues, and Bemidji residents are cutting up trees that fell on their houses and in their yards to bring out to the curb. The next step in that process is up to the City of Bemidji, which has curbside pickup for tree debris.

“As a city, we’re taking that to our city site and processing it,” said Beimdji Mayor Jorge Prince. “So we’ve got like a wood chipper and a grinder and these kinds of things. And this is wave one–we anticipate that there will be more waves, so to speak. So we’re going to send our trucks through, get everything we’ve got right now. But my guess is there’ll probably be another round at some point.”

As of now, the city is only taking trees, not any house material or other leftover debris, and everything must be cut down to a length of eight feet or less.

Despite all of the progress that has been made towards restoring the city, there is still a state of emergency declared.

“Our hope is that at some point the governor will declare a disaster,” said Prince. “But you have to meet certain thresholds in order for that to be considered a disaster. So our teams are still assessing, estimating costs, doing those kinds of things. So all of that is tied to the funding and trying to get help [get] people get back up and running.”

Now that most roads are clear and power has been restored, the city is looking at how to help individual residents.

“We’re kind of all on the same ocean, but our boats might be a little bit different,” Prince said. “So, you know, I think everybody’s got a little bit of [an] individualized circumstance.”

And on top of trying to get life back to normal, there are financial difficulties for thousands of residents.

“If they have financial hardship, then it’s a matter of, where is that resource?” added Prince. “That could be the United Way funding if you’re a citizen. On the other hand, it might be a program through Greater Bemidji or the Chamber of Commerce if you’re a business. And we are publishing some help guides on the city website, some state guides to help people sort through disaster, so that’s a place of resource.”

Beltrami County will also provide information on disaster recovery, debris processing, and more at its next board meeting, which will be next Tuesday, July 1st.