State chainsaw team back to work in Austin after being released

In the first five days, 150 trees were cut and 125 miles of roadway were cleared.

AUSTIN, Texas - A chainsaw strike team continued to work on several fallen trees in South Austin, just one of many assignments for the day.

"The mission is still making sure that we have access to roadways, sidewalks and fire hydrants and locating other potential hazards, issues along electrical lines, things like that. So getting in, most of our roads are cleared, but we still have some spots where we need to get further access and make sure that we've got two lanes of travel, things like that," said Karl Flocke with the Texas A&M Forest Service.

Thirty-nine specialists from the Texas A&M Forest Service formed into seven different crews. They've been deployed across Austin, going from Hamilton Pool to parks in Elgin.

In the first five days, 150 trees were cut and 125 miles of roadway were cleared. Every day has been a long day, turning hard wood into sawdust, according to Josh Mizrany, who arrived from Huntsville this past Saturday.

Record amount of storm debris picked up throughout Austin

Richard McHale, the Deputy Director for American Resource Recovery, said they’ve already picked up about 2,600 tons, about half of what was picked up during all of Winter Storm Uri.

"Each hazard is its own incident. We're taking it as we go. Each tree. You know, when you have stout storm damage, damage like this, you've got a lot of complicated cuts. So every tree is not the like the one before. And so yeah, take it slow and make sure you're doing everything fast and getting production," said Mizrany.

The strike teams, in their familiar bright yellow jackets and green uniforms, are a welcome sight for residents with storm damage.

"Oh, man, everybody's been really great. All the crews have been saying that everybody's been very thankful, offering us cookies and water and things like that. Austin has been very good to us, so we appreciate that," said Mizrany.

The City of Austin released the state teams earlier this week, which allowed them to focus on problem spots in Williamson County and around Bastrop. But a relief team arrived Thursday after Austin called them back.

City officials announce opening of resource centers to help residents affected by ice storm

City Manager Spencer Cronk says Austin Energy and its out-of-state partners continue working around the clock to restore power, but that many remaining outages are very complex.

"I think with the City of Austin, they had time to look and realize the support that we could provide, realize there are places where we were still needed and available to help them out and requested us to make sure that we could get now working on some things, maybe not the roadways, but the sidewalks adjacent to the roadways so folks maybe can access and still walk along safely," said Flocke.

The forest service chainsaw brigade is expected to work through the weekend.

Flocke offered advice regarding Oak Wilt.

"The good news is the initial damage caused by the ice storm likely did not result in much equal transmission. It was so cold at that point in time. We're not really worried about it. The concern is now going back in during our cleanup phase, people making cuts to oak trees is opening up a wound where oak what could get into the tree. So my message is if there are hazardous branches, branches that are still hanging attached to the tree, they need to be cut. Make that cut and paint it immediately after making the cut. Any kind of paint is fine. But for stops things where it's just kind of gnarly looking doesn't look very good. I would recommend holding off on making that cut until either July heat of the summer or maybe next winter to go back in and make that final cut to make it cleaner look better."

Flocke also said it's OK to prune other trees now like, cedar, pecan and cypress.