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Victoria Park clean-up progress

Progress made in Victoria Park clean-up

BRENDYN CREAMER TRURO NEWS brendyn.creamer @saltwire.com

TRURO — In the aftermath of Fiona, the toppled trees and impassable trails in Victoria Park were on many people's minds.

Six months out from the storm that nearly swept us all away, maintenance workers with the Town of Truro are still working hard on getting one of the town’s main attractions back to normal — removing dangerous trees, cutting branches and fixing pathways.

While it hasn’t been a great winter for snow-based activities, park supervisor Larry Anthony said the Fiona cleanup has remained productive throughout the season.

“It hasn’t been a good winter for skiing or snowshoeing, or anything that you’d want to use snow for, but the lack of snow has allowed us to do more work in the woods than what we normally would get done,” said Anthony.

He mentioned that throughout the winter, he and his team have only missed a couple of days of woods work.

“We’ve cleaned a lot up, and there’s a lot more to go,” said Anthony. “It’ll look a little different next spring when everybody goes back that hasn’t been there yet, but it’ll still look nice.”

The Town of Truro worked alongside two contractors to help clean the park, one of which being Atlantic Tree Solutions, who had cleared the park’s steep banks of damaged trees by way of rappelling.

Now, Anthony said the work left for them is to continue clearing the trails.

“We’re clearing off all the trails, and all the danger trees that are near a trail. We have five guys working pretty well every day, doing that stuff.”

The only spot in the park

that Anthony and his team couldn’t work on this winter was Jacob’s Ladder.

“We’re waiting,” said Anthony. “We left the trees on it to try and keep people off it till it gets (to be) a time of year where we can actually work on it. We weren’t trying to fix it in the middle of winter.”

Anthony added that when May comes around, they’ll pull the trees from the steps and “assess what we need to fix, where we need to fix.”

He also spoke briefly of other trails which sustained heavy damage.

“The Hemlock Trail took a beating,” said Anthony. “And then, behind the gazebo, the trail is gone — it just blew away. Fell down, the bank gave away.

“We have to reline that … find a new route for a couple of trails. Besides that, we’re doing pretty good.”

WHAT’S OPEN, AND WHAT ISN’T

Anthony said most of the park is now open to the public.

“There are places that aren’t there anymore, and then there are places like Jacob’s Ladder, but other than that, we’re just closing trails we happen to be working on that day. We’ve pretty well opened the whole thing.”

Despite this, visitors have been ignoring signage, barriers and volunteers meant to keep people out of work areas, said Anthony.

“Most people didn’t pay attention to our signage, but luckily no one was hurt, that we know of.”

Though volunteers couldn’t stop people from accessing the trails, they could offer information on why the trail was closed. This information was often ignored.

“We had signage, we had volunteers, but people would just walk past the volunteers and say, ‘you’re a volunteer. I’m going here, anyway.’”

Even when they put up snow fences to try and keep people away from dangerous trails, workers would come back only to find them destroyed.

“We hooked it onto the bridge on (both sides) so it’s four feet high, so people first off just ripped it down,” Anthony explained. “So, then we get it up there so it’s too hard to rip down, and people just cut it.”

“If you make something so secure like that and people still go through it? It’s hard to claim we left it unsafe.”

"We want to get the park open as quickly and as safely as we can, and as portions open up, we certainly want people in right away," said Joel Dawe, assistant director of parks and recreation. "Be mindful. Even in an area where things have been cleared, there still are trees that may be a bit unstable that haven't fallen yet, and that goes for all of the park.

"If there's a crew working, beware. Don't walk over the barricades."

Dawe also spoke of the state of the park, and what springtime visitors can expect.

"If folks haven't visited since pre-fiona, it's still spectacular, but it's different. There's some vantage points that have opened up that are nice, but maybe some of the other walking trails they enjoy look a little different.

"It's still a spectacular park. I encourage people to get out and enjoy it."

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2023-03-23T07:00:00.0000000Z

2023-03-23T07:00:00.0000000Z

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