Belleville, Ont. residents clean up neighbourhood after styrofoam fire

A messy cleanup continues in a Belleville, Ont., neighbourhood where a construction material fire took place Sunday night.

“I didn’t think it was going to be this bad of a mess, but it’s a mess,” says area resident Mark Soule. “We got the gutters cleaned, the neighbours have all been going around cleaning. We’ve got wonderful neighbours, they helped clean up our yard while we were away. It’s been a joint effort.”

The fire started at about 11 p.m. Sunday, raining ash on properties in the area of Station Street and Haig Road and littering charred styrofoam over a three-block radius. The City of Belleville said approximately 150 homes were evacuated.

Since the fire happened on private property, people who have costs associated with their cleanup or damage will have to go through their insurance directly.

“We started cleaning up, and this is now the second time cleaning up,” Gerhard Neumann, who lives in the impacted area, says. “The eavestroughs are all plugged up and they are full of debris. If we get any rain, that would be really messy, because the black stuff will run through the walls and everywhere.”

Garbage bags litter the sides of the streets in the neighbourhood, filled with burnt debris from the fire.

The charred styrofoam managed to find nooks and crannies everywhere, on the tops of roofs, inside gutters and on windowsills.

There are still a few houses with some burnt debris on them, but for the most part, the residents of the neighbourhood have banded together to clean up the area.

The City of Belleville has been working hard to clear the streets — which is it’s responsibility — making multiple passes with a street sweeper to clear the roads.

“We are very grateful to the city because they have been very good at coming in and cleaning up,” Neumann says. “They’ve took everything away that we’ve put on the curb, or raked to the curb. They were very quick and very efficient here in the cleanup.”

In order to dispose of all the garbage being left on the sides of the street, the city will be doing free trash pickups on Tuesday and Wednesday when, hopefully, the last of the mess will be removed.