Sandbagging

I've been busy since Wednesday, so this post is a little dated.

Wednesday night I was at Robert Fuller's house, playing video games. Fuller was looking at this blog and saw that there was a need for volunteers to fill sandbags. He had an appointment the next day and couldn't go.

I did have a bit of trouble finding the Street Department garage where the bagging took place. There was another volunteer who was lost as well. We found a helpful city employee who told us where to go. In the future, it might help to have signs directing first time volunteers on where to go.

The garage was packed when I found it. I found a pile of sand, an unattended shovel, and some guy just standing around. I got him to hold the bag open and went to work. As the pile of sand shrank, we had to sweep up loose sand so that we had something to dig into.

Another helpful city employee drove a van full of us down to Tillman Rd to build dikes. There were already piles of sandbags in the parking lots of several businesses, they just need to be assembled into something that would hold water back. We formed "bucket brigade" lines and formed walls in front of Atz's Ice Cream and Mungovan Chiropractic. A fellow who I assume was Dr. Mungovan thanked us for our help. I told him that I would be needing his help after lugging sandbags around all night.

One volunteer was critical of Mayor Henry for not filling up sandbags himself. He noted that the mayor was doing a news apperance at the Street Department garage. I'll stick up for Henry on this one. His role in an emergency is command and control of city resources. His appearance on TV was partly responsible for the high turnout of volunteers.