Council’s storm clean-up efforts clearing our nature strips
Published: 30 Jan 2025 11:28am
Wagga Wagga City Council tree crews and contractors have been working at full capacity to clear the fallen timber and debris from street trees, resulting from the severe storm event on Wednesday 15 January.
The thunderstorm brought heavy rainfall and strong winds, bringing down trees and tree limbs, which damaged buildings, vehicles and some infrastructure in suburban and rural areas across the Wagga Wagga Local Government Area (LGA).
Council has submitted an initial assessment form to the NSW Reconstruction Authority requesting that the LGA be declared a natural disaster area, in line with many other areas of the state that have been declared as such following the same storm event.
Supervisor Tree Planning & Management Andrew Oliver said Council’s focus has been on clearing away the fallen and damaged trees at its facilities, parks and gardens, reserves and along nature strips and roads.
“This is one of the biggest clean-up efforts we’ve had to organise in years in terms of the amount of trees and branches brought down and how widespread the damage was in our LGA,” Mr Oliver said.
“We had our tree crews out straight after the storm in response to calls to Customer Service, clearing street trees from roads and driveways in Central and North Wagga, Kooringal, Lake Albert, Forest Hill and Ashmont, to ensure residents and businesses could access their properties.
“We’ve also brought in contractors to assist with the clean-up, as the tree damage is quite extensive, not just within Wagga Wagga’s suburbs, but out in our villages, in our parks and gardens, and reserves, and along the road verges across our 2300-kilometre road network.”
More than 350 customer service requests for assistance were received in the first week after the storm and more jobs have been coming in over the past seven days, although the rate of requests has substantially slowed.
Council has thanked residents for their patience as the crews and contractors whittle down the long list of requests.
“It’s been a massive task, but we have made big inroads into ticking off those requests, clearing nature strips of the fallen timber from street trees in most of Wagga Wagga’s residential areas and the CBD,” Mr Oliver said.
“We are now getting ready to move out to the surrounding villages and to clean up the roadsides in our rural areas and will also be stepping up our tree safety audits, particularly in areas identified through the clean-up process and customer requests.
“We'll be looking at those trees which have lost limbs or may have been hit by a nearby tree which has fallen in the storm, to assess whether they’ve been structurally compromised and might need to be removed for safety.”
If you need to report a tree issue after a storm, please contact our Customer Service team at the Civic Centre or on 1300 292 442,