Nghe An: Workers work overtime during holidays, day and night cleaning up trash and fallen trees after storm No. 5
With no days off, urban environmental workers and green park workers have been working together to deal with the amount of garbage and fallen trees after storm No. 5. From early morning to late at night, they raced with the huge workload to return clean space to the streets.
"Unprecedented" amount of waste
Although it has been a week since storm No. 5 swept through, many streets in the center of old Vinh City are still very messy, with fallen trees not yet cleared, leaves not yet swept away but decomposed, forming clumps on the sidewalks, even blocking manholes. The workload of workers from Nghe An Urban Environment and Construction Joint Stock Company and Vinh City Green Parks Company is still very large.
“Before the storm, workersVinh City Green Park Joint Stock Companypruned the branches on the central streets according to the signed quantity. After the storm, the brothers urgently cleaned up the broken trees, working 12-16 hours/day. However, the amount of work after the storm far exceeded human capacity, so it was impossible to do it faster" - Mr. Cao Anh Sang, a technical officer of Green Park Joint Stock Company shared.
In the old Vinh city alone, there were 33,000 broken and fallen trees, while the company mobilized only over 100 people. In addition, the work of cutting down fallen trees was not simple. Each fallen tree trunk was a potential danger. Some trees were uprooted and tangled with electric wires, while some branches weighed hundreds of kilograms, ready to fall straight down from above. The soft, slippery ground after the rain further increased the risk of accidents.
“In the days immediately after the storm, time pressure is always heavy. People wait for roads to be cleared, the electricity industry waits to fix the power grid, the government waits for the scene to be cleared... The more urgent the situation, the higher the risk of accidents. If you are not experienced and healthy, it is easy to be distracted. And even a little distraction can be life-threatening” – Mr. Tran Cong Ly (worker of Vinh City Green Park Company) shared.
Along with the green force, workers of Nghe An Urban Environment and Construction Joint Stock Company also strained themselves on the garbage collection front. Just a few days after the storm, the amount of garbage from broken trees, rotten leaves, mud, and household waste reached an “unprecedented” level.
Mr. Pham Van Dung, team leader of Team 4, said: “Since the storm, we have not had a single day off. Every day we work three shifts, from 6am to 11pm, sometimes even finishing at 1-2am, and the weather is erratic. In the days after the storm, there was a power outage, no water, we suffered because we came home from work with no water to wash clothes, no electricity for daily activities, and the next day we had to wear dirty, wet clothes to work!”
According to Mr. Dung, because of the hard work, the workers are severely sleep deprived, and can sleep anywhere. Fortunately, in the first few days, the company received timely support from a number of units in taking care of the workers' lives, and some volunteer groups and businesses supported with human resources and vehicles, which helped shorten the processing time somewhat. Mr. Dung also hopes that people will be more aware because many roads were just cleared by workers, but the next day, large trees were found being thrown away, and the company cannot send large vehicles to handle such isolated spots.
Taking a break while waiting for the big truck to come collect the trash, Ms. Pham Thi Lien (born in 1992, worker of team 5) confided: “Since the day I worked overtime after the storm until now, I have not seen my child. When I left, my child was not awake, when I returned, my child was fast asleep. There is a lot of work, both storm trash and household trash. In the company, someone has fainted from overwork.”
With a gaunt face, Mr. Bui Van Quy (born in 1987, team 5) shared: "In the past few days, everyone has lost weight due to being overloaded. We just hope to receive sympathy and sharing from the people and agencies, to make this hardship less heavy."
Need sympathy and support
Storm No. 5 not only felled tens of thousands of trees and left behind thousands of tons of trash, but also created many conflicting opinions surrounding the issue of garbage collection. One of the most frequently mentioned debates was whether the prevention and post-storm treatment work was slow and drastic enough.
Some people asked: why didn’t they prune the trees before the storm, so that when the storm came, the trees would be in disarray and the work would be much harder? Some even said that the Vinh City Green Park Company was slow in carrying out its duties.
Regarding this issue, Mr. Nguyen Anh Dung - Director of Vinh City Green Parks Joint Stock Company, affirmed: The company has correctly and fully implemented the volume according to the contract with the People's Committee of Vinh City (old), which means pruning 2,700 trees. Not only that, right after the storm, the unit urgently deployed and pruned about 1,000 more trees, all exceeding the contracted volume.
With a force of just over 100 people, dealing with tens of thousands of fallen trees in a short time is a huge challenge. Although they are still doing their best, this is also the time when they need more sympathy and support from the people.
People's awareness, in many cases, is the most effective solution. Mr. Phan Linh (born in 1981 - Thanh Vinh ward) said: "My house has a large mango tree in front of the door. Before the storm, I didn't have time to prune it, butright after the storm, the family has proactively cut and cleaned up within their ability. The workload is still huge, so I hope everyone will be more aware."
The storm has passed, the holidays have ended, but there is still a lot of garbage and trees that need to be cleaned and processed. The city can only truly revive when the whole system and community join in. The blue-shirt workers may be the core force, but for life to quickly return to normal, each person and each organization can become a "voluntary worker" in their own home and street.
