Desert Storm Leaves a Hefty Cleanup Bill

Weekend winds raged through the desert, leaving behind a huge mess and Palm Springs crews shoveling up debris from the storm that shoveled Palm Springs.

“Our concern first is making sure we’re able to handle the call load, and taking care of those situations that are dangerous: down power lines, people needing medical assistance,” Palm Springs city manager David Ready said.

With only a typical Saturday crew, “We started calling in our graveyard officers in early,” Mike Kovaleff of the Palm Springs Police Department said.

“We relied on the mass mutual aid agreement we have with the county and the state, and we brought in outside resources to help mitigate some of the calls,” Fire Chief Scott Ventura said.

Calls exceeded normalcy exponentially.

“We run about 22 to 25 calls in a 24-hour period. During this wind event, we ran about 82 calls,” Ventura said.

“I’ve never seen that high volume before in all my time with the police department,” Kovaleff said.

Calls of trees down, power poles snapped, power outages, and even some small fires – crews were dispatched to just about every corner of Palm Springs.

“A lot of beauty, and it’s gone. It’s going to cost a lot of money to get this back into shape,” Palm Springs resident Jack Cioffi said.

The city says of the 500 trees the wind tore down, half of them are not replaceable. Fixing tree damage alone will cost the city more than half a million dollars.

“When the thing’s all said and done, we could be looking at $750,000 to $800,000. That includes tree removal, new landscaping, the personnel costs,” Ready said.

“That’s a big cost that probably no one was expecting, but it’s got to be picked up somehow,” Palm Springs visitor Jimmy Waters said.

“It’s not only going to cost the city, but it’s going to cost us, in the long run. Our money goes into it,” Cioffi said.

“We do have a small fund that we do have to prepare for this, obviously, but we’re going to have to look to the city’s fund balance. We’re going to look to our insurance carriers to hopefully cover part of it,” Ready said.

The city’s attempt to get palm trees standing upright again — the way everyone knows and loves the desert.