Volunteers needed for tornado cleanup near Iona

Keep Lee County Beautiful will be heading out to help with tornado clean-up after last week’s devastating storms.

The group is focusing on picking up debris along Southwest Florida roadways.

And they need the community’s help.

The group is asking volunteers to meet at the Gulf Points Shopping Plaza, at 15600 San Carlos Blvd. Volunteers can register there to help with the cleanup.

Cleaning up is also important for the environment in order to keep debris out of the Gulf of Mexico.

Volunteers will be picking up trash and big pieces of metal left behind by the tornadoes last week.

Volunteers will receive supplies such as safety vests, litter sticks, trash bags and then branch off in all directions.

They are cleaning the areas surrounding the neighborhoods in Iona affected by the storms.

They won’t be helping with cleanup at the homes because families are still sorting through debris.

“They are finding things that belong to individuals that live in those communities. So they’re trying to salvage whatever they can, I mean, they’re finding pictures, you know, notebooks that have personal information, that sort of thing. And they don’t want to have us having 150-plus, and volunteers to sort of going through these neighborhoods right now,” said Mike Thomas, program coordinator for Keep Lee County Beautiful.

The clean-up will also help Mother Nature.

“What a lot of people don’t realize, because we have a lot of people from up north and roadside trash down here. When it goes down into our storm drains it goes straight to a water source, it goes to a lake, a tributary to the river. And all of that is going to flow into the Gulf,” Thomas said.

The tornado cleanup will be from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m.