GUAM — The FEMA-assigned Typhoon Mawar debris removal mission on the island of Guam managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers advanced into a new phase today with the beginning of debris hauling operations.

USACE awarded contracts earlier this month to disaster recovery contractors ECC and PFM for debris removal and they’ve used the ensuing days to solidify cleanup crews and move equipment into place.

“Today we are at site 11, the Tiyan debris site, and are starting to receive the first truckloads of vegetation coming from the village of Hagat,” said USACE Debris Mission Manager Todd Turner from the Sacramento District. “We have a tower set up where they are determining the cubic yardage within the trucks that are coming in and then we have the laydown for the trucks after the cubic yardage has been determined.”

There is also separation of white goods going on and then eventually the removal of the construction and demolition material from the site.

Michael Curtis with the Los Angeles District is a Quality Assurance Specialist on-site at Tiyan monitoring the operations for the typhoon debris recovery mission.

“The trucks are placing the vegetation on site to be processed on site through the woodchipper and the contractor is separating out the white goods and will be draining the freon from those white goods and then processing them,” said Curtis. “White goods are refrigerators, large appliances, anything that has insulation and freon in it. The white goods will later be smashed with the bucket of a front loader, driven over, and then packaged for recycling.”

Soon, debris separation and removal will begin at public schools ahead of the new school year. Schools, with the help of the Guam National Guard, sorted their eligible Mawar-related debris and set it in the right-of-way (ROW) within 10-feet of the curbside. The USACE contractor teams will make one pass per debris stream (vegetation, construction and demolition material, and white goods) per school ROW. After the school ROWs are complete, residential debris removal will begin.

This program is a part of the combined Federal, state, and local Typhoon Mawar recovery response.