19
November/December 2017
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THE DAVEY BULLETIN
CLS HELPS COMMUNITIES RECOVER FROM IRMA
Thousands of south Florida residents relied on the hard
work of Davey Commercial Landscape Services (CLS) crews
who, with help from Davey employees from across the
country, tackled the cleanup in the wake of Hurricane Irma.
Davey's South East Florida territory serves two large
community spaces. In Babcock Ranch, near Fort Myers,
Florida, CLS cares for the community's downtown area
and rights-of-way with a capacity to serve 21,000 future
home sites. In Ave Maria, about 2,000 current homeowners
get the same landscape care services near the community's
roadways, median islands, parking lots, baseball fields
and park areas.
Irma ravaged the landscape of both communities.
"Hundreds of large live oaks and magnolia trees were
uprooted, twisted and destroyed across Ave Maria," said
Jason Bassler, regional manager, CLS. "Ave Maria had the
most damage of any of our properties."
A Davey utility account in Michigan sent five bucket trucks
with chippers to help. A Davey office in Tennessee sent a
truck. About 17 employees responded to help the 15 Davey
employees who work full-time on the property.
"Our client was very happy to see all the bucket trucks
and additional resources we provided for them," Bassler
said. Thanks to the support, the initial cleanup response
proceeded smoothly, and Davey has been able to transition
the community from emergency response and cleanup
to restoration.
"Without that collaboration internally, that would not have
happened," Bassler said. "There are still stumps that we are
removing and back-filling the holes with soil and sod. Down
the road, there will be an installation of new hardwoods,
palms and shrubs throughout the property."
At Babcock Ranch, the CLS response was less intensive,
as the existing crews worked together with the community's
landscape installation contractor primarily to stand up and
Above: This large live oak tree fell across a parking lot in Ave Maria
and was typical of the kind of damage the community sustained
from Hurricane Irma.
Below: Sustained winds of around 100 mph left damage like this
throughout the two large properties Davey's South East CLS
territory cares for in Florida.
re-stake young, recently planted trees that had been blown
over by the hurricane. In addition, the South East Florida
territory services about 60 properties on the state's east
coast, all of which sustained some level of storm damage.
Again, other out-of-town CLS territories sent help via crews
and equipment to support the storm response.
"It was a statewide event," Bassler said. "We'll have
work from this storm into 2018 on the restoration and
replanting aspects."
