Cleanup continues in Mount Prospect

Cleanup efforts from Tuesday's tornado continued Sunday in Mount Prospect as residents prepared for a village debris-removal effort set for Monday.

Among the residents surveying damage on Na Wa Ta Avenue was Tom Meyer, who returned from a family vacation Saturday night to find a tall white pine had crashed through a wooden play set in his back yard.

The tree came down with such force that pieces of it remained deeply embedded in the turf Sunday.

Luckily, the tree didn't damage his house or a shed in the yard.

“That's a blessing,” Meyer said.

The parkway in front of Meyer's house was covered by stacks of branches and large slices of the tree trunk, which was cut up by a tree service before he and his family arrived home.

Meyer had heard about the damage from a neighbor and wanted the tree removed before his kids saw it, he said. Still, they were shocked by what they found when they returned him and saddened by the destruction of the play set.

“A couple of gallons of ice cream” helped ease the pain, he said.

On nearby Can Dota Avenue, Bob Finn used a dry vacuum to suck wood chips and shards in front of his house Sunday. An enormous tree on the parkway there split in half, leaving a tall stump that resembled a badly shattered bone sticking out of the ground.

The section of tree that fell knocked a light off Finn's garage and damaged a car on the driveway. Otherwise, it spared his house.

“We were lucky,” Finn said. “Those people in Missouri and Alabama ... everybody (here) still has their house, their roof.”

Finn and his wife were home when the tornado, moving north, hit the neighborhood. As the tree snapped out front, deck chairs whirled around their backyard, he said.

It was all over in 15 seconds, he estimated.

Tree debris had been moved to curbs in front of houses throughout Mount Prospect on Sunday.

A village tree and brush pickup program will begin at 6 a.m. Monday. Once crews are done in a neighborhood they will not return, according to a news release.

Logs should be left as long as possible and placed next to smaller branches.

Unlike traditional yard waste pickups, branches, logs or other pieces of tree debris from the storm do not need to be bundled.

Tree removal operations will run from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. every day until they're complete, officials said.

The effort is expected to take more than a week. Pickup progress and other information will be posted on the village's website, mountprospect.org.