Lifeguards, Residents, And Visitors Mobilize To Clean-Up Vineyard Wind Turbine Blade Debris

The early morning beach walkers were the first to spot the debris. At daybreak on Tuesday, island residents almost immediately began reporting that Nantucket's south shore was littered with pieces of fiberglass and green or white foam.

And so a massive clean-up effort began. While Vineyard Wind stated it was sending a team of eight people to the island to initiate a "debris recovery" effort after the failure of one of its turbine blades 15 miles southwest of Nantucket, local residents, visitors, and town staff didn't wait to start removing it themselves.

Nantucket lifeguards, along with Nantucket Land Bank staff and DPW workers, led the effort alongside citizens and visitors who gathered piles of debris and bagged it up for removal.

Vineyard Wind characterized the debris as "non-toxic fiberglass fragments" and even though they are "not hazardous to people or the environment," the company recommended that only its recovery team handle the debris. And yet the clean-up effort continued in earnest.

Below are some of the photos shared with the Current on Tuesday from island residents: