Work set for Saturday to clean up branches in Havre

A major effort is planned for Saturday, Global Youth Service Day, to continue work to clean up storm damage from a blizzard last October.

Adam Maes, AmeriCorps volunteer with Montana Campus Compact at Montana State University-Northern, said this morning that he is spearheading an effort to clean up branches still littering the town from the record-setting snowstorm Oct. 2-3, and everyone is invited.

He is asking people to gather at Northern’s Student Union Building Saturday at 10 a.m., where the volunteers will be split into groups and sent to different parts of town to clean up.

He said that when he drives around town, he still sees piles of branches broken off during the storm that damaged trees, closed roads and knocked out power from Chester to Malta, for more than a week for some people.

Global Youth Service Day, established in 1988, and now observed in more than 100 countries, is between April 20-22 this year. It was established to focus youth on helping solve critical problems and create improvements in their communities.

Maes said the name is misleading for the Havre project — he is not looking just for people age 17 to 25.

“We want to be open to the whole community,” he said. “We want all ages, anyone who is willing to help.”

He added that a major aid to the effort would be people bringing pickup trucks or trailers to haul the branches away. Even if someone can’t pick up the branches, loaning a trailer someone could use would be very helpful, he said.

Maes said that when he contacted the city to see what need could be met in an effort on Global Youth Service Day, “they were like, well, branches might be a good idea.”

He said volunteers might pick up trash or other items as well if they see them, but the priotity is the aftereffects of the October storm.

“Our main goal is to go around and get all the branches that have piled up on the side of the street,” he said.

For more information, he said, people can call his office at 265-3581 or call his cellphone at 406-560-6891 or email him at [email protected].