Hurricane Season: Clearing the Yard Before the Storm, Not After

Anyone who has lived in Broward County through a season knows the pattern. A storm gets a name, it enters the cone, and suddenly every yard on the street is being emptied at once. Bulk pickup is overwhelmed, every hauler in the county is booked, and the hardware store has no straps left.

The work is the same work it was in June. The difference is that in June you could get it done in an afternoon.

What actually becomes a problem

In sustained hurricane-force wind, anything not fixed down is potentially airborne. The list of things we get called about after a storm is remarkably consistent:

• Patio furniture — particularly lightweight aluminium and plastic, and umbrellas, which behave like sails
• Grills and propane tanks — the tank is the serious one
• Planters and garden ornaments — heavy enough to do real damage through a window
• Broken fence panels that were already loose
• Sheds that are past their best, which tend to come apart rather than move as a unit
• Playsets and trampolines — trampolines are notorious
• Scrap piles — old lumber, roofing offcuts, the fence you replaced last year and stacked behind the shed
• Loose vegetative debris — trimmings and fronds already cut and waiting

The last one deserves attention. Vegetative waste sitting in a pile is only a pile until the wind picks up. Cut palm fronds are heavy, stiff and edged, and they travel.

Do it in June

Season runs June through November. The sensible window for clearing is the front of it, for three reasons.

Availability. In June we can generally be at your property the same day you call. In the week a storm is named, nobody in Broward County can promise that, including us. We will be honest with you about it rather than take the booking and let you down.

Bulk pickup still functions. Municipal collection has capacity in June. Post-storm it is dealing with county-wide vegetative debris and normal service goes out of the window for weeks.

You make better decisions. Clearing a yard calmly in June, you notice the fence panel that is going and the shed that has had it. Doing it in a hurry with a cone on the television, you tie the trampoline to a tree and hope.

The pre-season pass

Walk the property once, early in the season, and be honest about four things:

1. What is already broken. The cracked planters, the fence panel leaning, the patio set with a rusted-through leg. It is not going to survive the season and it is a hazard until it goes.
2. What you have not used in two years. The playset the kids outgrew, the grill that stopped working, the pool float graveyard. Storage that is also a projectile.
3. What you could not bring inside in a hurry. Be realistic about the garage. If everything loose in the yard will not fit, something has to go permanently.
4. The scrap pile. Every South Florida property has one somewhere. Lumber, old fencing, metal. It has to go.

What comes off that list is a single truckload for most properties — $250 to $450 in our pricing — done in an afternoon in June rather than not at all in September.

After a storm

If you are reading this after the fact, a few practical notes.

Keep vegetative debris separate from everything else. Municipalities run separate collection for storm vegetative waste and it is processed differently — mulched rather than buried. Mixing a broken fence into a pile of branches turns a recyclable pile into general waste and often means the crew skips it entirely.

Do not touch anything near a downed line. Obvious, and worth saying anyway. That is a utility job, not a homeowner job and not ours.

Photograph damage before clearing it. Insurance will want it, and once it is gone it is gone.

Expect municipal collection to be slow. County-wide debris events take weeks to work through. If your driveway needs to be usable before then, that is when a private hauler is worth the money.

What we take after a storm

Branches, palm fronds and hedge cuttings. Broken fencing and gates. Destroyed patio furniture, umbrellas and screens. Collapsed sheds and playsets. Damaged appliances. Ruined carpet and drywall if water got in. Roofing debris and shingles.

What we cannot take is the same short list as always: chemicals, fuel, propane tanks, asbestos-containing material.

One honest caveat

In the days immediately before a named storm, and in the first days after one, we are as stretched as everyone else. We will always tell you truthfully what we can do and when, rather than book you and hope. Several of our reviews mention us turning up within the hour — that is genuinely normal for us, and it is genuinely not normal in a storm week.

Which is the whole argument for doing it in June.

Call (954) 536-8189 and we will come and take the pile away while the weather is still boring.