LEXINGTON, Ky. (LEX 18) — When the power went out Friday in the Kenwick neighborhood, Kentucky Utilities came out to restore it. G.J. Gerard says he and his family left for the night. He explains he was surprised at what he saw when he came back home.
He says, "I didn't go in the backyard immediately, I didn't think anything about it, but by lunchtime, I came out with my dog and just looked and saw branches downed everywhere."
While clearing power lines, he says KU cut a lot of trees in this neighborhood and his two 30-year-old pines — that he hopes will survive. Now, he's left to clean it up.
Gerard says, "One thing we loved about this house when we moved in here was the canopy that this area created. Because of the canopy, grass never grew. We pebbled all of it and really enjoy it back here.”
A spokesperson with KU, Daniel Lowry, explained that when they come out to work on restoring power, or addressing and clearing lines during a storm, they remove the trees from the lines and restring them. They say any tree removal or debris cleanup is the responsibility of the homeowner.
Lowry says, "Our crews, they're not able to haul away debris unfortunately they can’t use woodchippers or stuff like that because this could really slow down their efforts to restore power to folks and that's our number one objective is to safely and quickly restore power."
Gerard would like to see this policy changed. At the end of the day, he says he wants others to treat people in the ways that they would like to be treated.
He says, "All of these comments from people saying, 'you've ruined my yard, you've ruined my tree, you killed my tree,' and there's never really an address... No one is ever talking about it. It's one of those funny things where everybody knows, but no one does anything about it."
He's looking for a change that will help spare more trees and yards.
