BATON ROUGE - This past weekend, many homeowners started to gut their homes, piling items and soiled possessions at the curb.

"It looks like a bomb went off," said Jason Myer about the cleanup in his neighborhood.

The debris will be going to multiple landfills across the area. The Department of Environmental Quality is taking a look at what needs to go where because not every landfill can take each item.

Debris pickup has already begun in some areas. DEQ is asking households to organize debris into six piles: household trash, vegetation, construction debris, appliances, electronics and hazardous materials. Place the items at the edge of the property before the curb.

"We realize that some of it has commingled and what happens then, the waste hauler will pick it up and it will be taken to the landfill and somewhere in the landfill it will have to be sorted," said DEQ press secretary Greg Langley. "That slows down the process."

DEQ estimates 2.5 to 4 million cubic yards of debris will be collected from the historic flooding. While Baton Rouge landfills have the capacity, DEQ says it will take some time to collect everything and ask for patience.

"It's an awful lot of debris," said Langley. "It will be picked up and as we go along and work the kinks out of the system it will move faster."

DEQ also reminds residents it's illegal to burn solid waste in Louisiana.

There's no time estimate for how long debris removal will take.