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After Devastating Storms, Hamden's Sleeping Giant Has 'Very Different Set Of Clothing'

Tom Tyler, director of Connecticut State Parks, inside Sleeping Giant's picnic area. This and other parts of the park were destroyed following severe storms. Tyler said he's "optimistic" parts will re-open before the fall.
Patrick Skahill
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Connecticut Public Radio
Tom Tyler, director of Connecticut State Parks, inside Sleeping Giant's picnic area. This and other parts of the park were destroyed following severe storms. Tyler said he's "optimistic" parts will re-open before the fall.

In May, several tornadoes touched down in Connecticut -- destroying homes, uprooting trees and knocking out power to thousands of customers. The weather also devastated several state parks, including the iconic Sleeping Giant State Park in Hamden.

Walking through Sleeping Giant’s picnic area, the once-shaded grove is virtually unrecognizable.

Pine trees are everywhere, uprooted and scattered like toothpicks. Picnic tables are flipped sideways, pinned in place by dead trees that fell like dominoes. Cooking grills are twisted, square frames wrapped like molten metal around sheared-off trunks.

Tom Tyler, director of Connecticut state parks, surveyed the devastation.

“What’s striking to me is the unbelievably high number of trees that were just sheared off halfway up,” Tyler said, “indicating the tremendous forces that were at play here to snap these big pine trees like they were twigs.”

Those forces were at play across Fairfield, Litchfield, and New Haven counties on May 15, when four tornadoes touched down in Connecticut.

The National Weather Service said Hamden was one of six towns those tornados hit.

According to the mayor’s office, the town suffered about $2 million in public property damage, six homes were destroyed. Statewide, the storm killed two people.

Credit Patrick Skahill / Connecticut Public Radio
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Connecticut Public Radio
Tyler said the state isn't likely to be able to make much money off the downed trees on the timber market. "It's pine, which would have less value than other hard woods," he said. "Most of these trees are damaged, there's not significant saw lengths of these that are available.

At Sleeping Giant, the main gate is blocked off with police tape. Shattered bits of cars are in the parking lot where trees fell on vehicles. Tyler said several cars were crushed, but the storm didn’t cause any serious injuries.

It did cause serious damage. Tyler said cleaning up the park will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“As you look around in this central area of the park, it’s about a seven-acre area, there really isn’t almost a single tree that isn’t undamaged,” Tyler said. “All of the fully-downed trees will have to be removed. And the ones that are standing and sheared off will have to be removed as well.”

To help offset the cleanup costs, the state has formally requested the Federal Emergency Management Agency conduct damage assessments next week.

Tyler is hopeful FEMA will help the state recoup some recovery costs, but it’s a long process.

Meanwhile, cleanup will move forward. Next week contractors with heavy machinery will be on site conducting logging and excavation work.

“What we’re going to need to do is basically remove all the root systems for these trees, to be able to start over here with planting,” Tyler said.

After that, the focus will turn to removing more than 150 trees that are scattered across the park’s main trail.

The entrance to Sleeping Giant's main trail remains mostly blocked by downed trees. The park is closed to the public while crews work to assess and clean up the damage. "There's still an awful lot of unstable trees out here," Tyler said.
Credit Patrick Skahill / Connecticut Public Radio
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Connecticut Public Radio
The entrance to Sleeping Giant's main trail remains mostly blocked by downed trees. The park is closed to the public while crews work to assess and clean up the damage. "There's still an awful lot of unstable trees out here," Tyler said.

Hulten said she cried when she saw the damage to the park.

“The people I’ve talked to, who have worked at the Giant for these years -- all of the manly men -- said they got tears in their eyes,” Hulten said.

Until Hulten’s group gets the go-ahead from the state, they’re staying out of the closed park.

But they hope to eventually get back in there with chainsaws and help clear off smaller trails.

State Park Director Tom Tyler said the state will need all the help it can get. Especially with the scattershot nature of the tornado and storm damage, which also closed Wharton Brook State Park, just a short way to the east.

“You’ll see these little pockets of some pretty intense damage and then long, long stretches … where you see no impacts to the storm at all,” Tyler said. “Then you’ll come out onto Route 5 in Wallingford at Wharton Brook State Park, and again, there’s an area there that’s just complete devastation.”

Patrick Skahill is a reporter and digital editor at Connecticut Public. Prior to becoming a reporter, he was the founding producer of Connecticut Public Radio's The Colin McEnroe Show, which began in 2009. Patrick's reporting has appeared on NPR's Morning Edition, Here & Now, and All Things Considered. He has also reported for the Marketplace Morning Report. He can be reached at pskahill@ctpublic.org.

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