Community Comes Together For Cleanup

As communities across Houghton County begin cleanup efforts, government officials are putting the pieces in place to move forward after the weekend’s storm, and many community members have stepped up to the plate and asked “what can I do to help?”

“We’ve had mass devastation in our communities. We’re assessing each situation as we go. We’ve had many road closures. We’ve had washouts. We’ve lost homes and businesses. We need to make our community safe right now,” said Lieutenant Nick Roberts of the Houghton Police Department, who urges folks to stay away from hazardous areas.

“We’ve had a lot of problems with people crossing our safe areas or barricades. Please don’t do that. That’s an unsafe area. If I have to come and kick somebody out of our safe zone, that’s keeping me from doing something else more important for our emergency services. So don’t do it. I understand people are curious; they want to know what’s going on. Check with your news media, watch the news, the TV. Get your information that way. Those are the safe ways to do it,” Roberts stated.

As many in the area have been unable to resist a plethora of photo opportunities, others have banned together to begin cleaning up and making way for the repairs of city streets.

“Just like everybody in the community, we were just watching the devastation yesterday and thinking ‘Man, where do we get started? What do we do? How do we help?’ That’s what Jesus would do, so that’s what we’re doing,” said Pastor Aaron Gehrke of Houghton, who lead an organized effort of volunteers yesterday who spent the day sweeping and shoveling some the dirt and debris that was washed downhill onto Shelden Avenue sidewalks.

Gehrke said, “Our church is in partnership with a summer Bible camp, called the Keweenaw Base Camp, out in Atlantic Mine. They have a group from central Wisconsin right now. That group of high school students is out here right now helping clean up our town as they’re loving our area.”

Likewise, efforts have been taking place throughout the county.

“They’re coming out to help clean up and assist the villages in the county to be able to clean up this mess. So it’s nice to see we’ve got these young folks here today to help us out,” said State Representative Scott Dianda.

Dianda said, “The damage, we have a low estimate of just the city of Houghton alone is over $20 million just to fix some of these roads up. We start looking across the county with the road commissions, we’re probably looking at three to four times that amount of money.”

While Dianda is working on allocating state dollars, US Congressman Jack Bergman is doing his part to secure federal funding.  “This was a disaster. This was an act of God, if you will, when you think of weather. But we’re Yoopers. We’re resilient. We will pull together just like I’ve seen the agencies doing here today. We’re together in this. Everybody’s coordinating so everybody needs to step up in some way to help out their neighbors, help out their friends who maybe got it a little worse than they did so help other people out,” Bergman said.

Meanwhile Governor Snyder has declared the area a state of disaster, which will speed up the funding process on both the state and federal levels.

On the local level, officials ask residents to help any way they can even with simple acts of kindness toward your neighbors.

Gehrke’s fellowship, Saint Peter and Paul Lutheran, just like many area churches, fire and police departments, are accepting donations for those in need.

“People are calling, they want to donate money; they want to donate food. So we are coming up with websites as I speak now for people to do that also. So those are what you can do to help us out,” Lt. Roberts said.

The Portage Health Foundation has established a fund for storm relief. Read about it, and find out how to contribute to it, here.

The Keweenaw Community Foundation has also established a fund for storm relief. Contribute through their GoFundMe site here.

If your home in Houghton County was damaged by flooding, call 2-1-1 to arrange to have it inspected.