Community rallies to clean up dumped tires in their neighborhood

all this week we're tackling one of the big issues Detroiters want fixed blight and we're getting some stuff done here it is no secret Detroit is plagued by illegal dumping it's a common site to find vacant lots piled high with trash old appliances even post boats but we found something that surprised even us in fact officials from the city were shocked when we showed them this problem abandoned homes stuffed to the rafters with discarded tires abandoned tires piled high next to abandoned homes unfortunately that's not news these days in Detroit see this massive pile of tires outside this is just the tip of the iceberg you gotta see what's inside this is news more tires thousands of them packed into abandoned homes floor to ceiling wall to wall upstairs Downstairs James Carter tells me a dozen houses up and down the street are just like this one hidden dumping grounds for discarded tires fire department couldn't even make it downstairs if they had to so the litter of these tires are stuffed all the way down stairs all the way down stairs all the way to the top and you won't believe who's dumping them here so have you seen people dumping these yes - who are they um local tire shops like I said they don't want to pay they gotta pay for each tire to get rid of they'd rather just up that and keep the money in a park or they hire people off the street to dump it for local tire shops and as you can see neighbors are trying to keep up with the flood of useless rubber hauling tires back out to the curb one at a time so you've actually started pulling some of these out of the garage yes as you see in some of the front yard is it's too many and the city will only haul away four tires per house on bulk pickup day clearly it's a losing battle beyond the obvious eyesore neighbors here are worried about the danger if a fire breaks out these piles could burn for weeks so you've tried calling the city yes we tried calling the city wind getting no answer well maybe Channel seven can help James ask again maybe this time they'll hear him mayor Duggan can you get us some dumpsters trash bag rakes we can clean up all the houses that you see that's the bad that got chucked in them and make the city look good it's absolutely shocking to see the similar actually go into these houses and just dump tires almost like they're just kind of hiding them guess what this time the city heard the complaints city spokeswoman Alexis Wylie met me in the neighborhood climbed over the mountain of tires and was shocked as I was to see what was hiding inside these homes oh my god yeah I mean this is thank you so much for calling so there's no question now the city knows what's going on behind these walls the question is what are they gonna do about as much we can get out to the curb we're gonna get it picked up and we're gonna have crews a contractor actually come along and start picking up the tires that are out here and inside the house we got to come up with a good solution for that well we're happy to report a whole lot has happened since yesterday when we talked to the city Ronnie Dahl live on maple ridge near Chalmers right it looks like that city spokeswoman started burning up the phone lines after we showed her that mass yesterday Ronnie yes we're getting some action out here Steve Annette you know when you said a lot of tires thousands of tires take a look at this pile now that they are all out of the houses and in the roadway on the curbside I have to tell you I've never seen anything like this but a lot of effort was made today one by one volunteers rode each of these tires out to the curb site from these homes and what's going to happen now well the city is going to be coming by to pick them up that's just part of this but it took the volunteers about 25 from area churches and community groups coming together to at least get this process started it's a shame that the residents of the community are those in the community feel like our community is a dumping ground but I say that because our community is a blessed community we have people who are willing to eliminate the blight and to revive those things that other people don't see worth reviving pastor Gaddy such a great person for this community here in district 4 really helping out a lot now there's still so much work to be done because we are across the street now you can see there are still tires piled inside that home there on the second floor they are in between the homes and so starting this weekend Detroit public works crews are going to be out here picking them up for now we are live on Detroit's east side back to you I was out there yesterday Ronnie and three blocks up the street there are more houses filled with tires by the way a shout-out to Odell Tate he's the district 4 manager yesterday when the city got on the phone they called Odell and he's got those people rolling that's what it takes it takes a village and in this particular case the people there were willing to clean it up themselves with the problem is they had no place to put the tires well hopefully like like Alexis Wiley said the city will come out there collecting objetive them get rid of next step we got to catch a guys doing it so if anybody sees or knows what's going on there give us a call we'll keep your identity a secret

Channel: WXYZ-TV Detroit | Channel 7

Views: 393,696

Keywords: default, community, rallies, clean up, dumped, tires, neighborhood, local, news

Id: dHh93cv4HNE

Length: 5min 9sec (309 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 29 2014