Soggy cleanup continues in homes, offices

He had been on the job for a week, and still, the task wasn't complete.

Last Friday, Bob Szostak was pulling waterlogged debris from an office building on Osgood Street, next to the Spicket River. This street sustained some of the worst damage during the flood.

``We had to gut it," said Szostak, a Methuen construction worker, of a nearby ground-floor office. ``We took out sheetrock and the doors. Everything. There was a lot of damage."

With a nod to an adjacent blue Dumpster filled with soggy cardboard boxes stuffed with files, he said, ``This is the third Dumpster we've used."

For Szostak and other construction workers, the days since the flood have been especially busy.

City officials say that in addition to the 1,000 homes that had to be evacuated because of rising waters, several thousand more had about 15 inches of water in their basements.

``A lot of those people are cleaning out their basements because they had things that were water damaged," said Raymond DiFiore, director of Methuen's Public Works Department.

To accommodate all the refuse, the city has placed Dumpsters in several of the hardest hit neighborhoods and has waived all dumping fees at the local waste facility. The damage, said Szostak, ``has been unbelievable."

CHRISTINE McCONVILLE