City to help elderly, disabled with 'Snowtember' tree clearing

Elderly Calgarians and people physically unable to clear fallen tree limbs from their property will get some help from the city.

Crews are busy clearing away fallen branches from this week's snowstorm, dubbed 'Snowtember' on social media, but homeowners are responsible for looking after their own property. However, those who can't do the work can let the city know they need help.

"Citizens can call 311 and describe their situation," said Katie Black, director of the city's community and neighbourhood services. "We have a separate stream called the seniors' home maintenance service ... requests for service will be taken starting the weekend of Sept. 13 and the work will commence the following week."

Calgary's three landfills have already taken in more than two million kilograms of tree debris.

The city will open its 33 leaf and pumpkin recycling depots across Calgary Saturday and those locations will also accept broken branches.

There's still no estimate on how long it will take to clean up the downed branches or how much it will cost.

Enmax says there are fewer than 400 Calgarians still without power.

At the peak of the outage, Enmax says ,there were twice as many customers without power as there were during the 2013 floods.

And that's good news,

"That's a good thing for people to remember to give an idea of the scope of what we're working with," said Doris Kaufmann Woodcock, Enmax spokesperson. 

"We know that we've had some people that are particularly frustrated with how this process goes ... we did have a breakdown though with communications process and this is a take-away for us to really take a look at and see how we can do it much better the next time around."