UNION CITY, Mich. — Fallen trees are still keeping people out of their homes and off their property more than a week after the deadly tornado cut through Union City.

Hundreds of volunteers loaded up and headed out to clear the debris Saturday free of charge, using their own tools on their own time.

The Union City Tornado Response Team recruited dozens of groups through a single Facebook post asking for help.

They set out with chainsaws and tractors, their work ranging from raking twigs into a pile, to cutting down dangerously perched tree trunks.

Daniel Farnham is used to responding to disasters as a maintenance worker, but never expected to need help himself after his trees snapped.

“You don’t realize the impact it is on the actual homeowner itself when you’re not on that side of it,” he said.

Crews met up for a morning briefing and split up. One to remove bigger trees — and another to pick up smaller bits of wood scattered across yards.

Off of Division Street, workers ran tractors and excavators offered by businesses.

“It’s like, ‘Hey, what can you, if anything, offer? This is what we’re doing,'” volunteer Dave Ferris said. “And they’re like, ‘No problem. Tell us what you need.'”

Volunteers cleared twisted branches from this entire valley next to a nursing home.

Most of the crew had never met before, but they worked together on a plan to remove trees suspended 30 feet in the air.

“You’ve got to start somewhere,” Ferris said. “We’ve got the time. We’ve got the equipment, the availability to help and stuff.”

Tree grapples will handle the rest of the work once these crews finish, with much of the debris headed to a county burn pile.

The Response Team says it isn’t ready to quit until everyone has every need met.

“We’re not going to solve this problem in a week,” Tornado Response Team Leader Judi Henckel said. “We’re not going to solve it in a month. We’re going to do our darndest to get it solved as fast as we can.”

“Today we have 20 people get back a little piece of their life,” she added.

The Response Team also has a critical need of plastic totes for homeowners to pack up their belongings.