By Andrea Winkjer Collin, Editor, North Dakota Horizons
I've had a variety of experiences over past Memorial Day weekends. Filling orange and yellow bags at a "Sandbag Central" site in the middle of Bismarck-Mandan's frantic flood fight, well, this was a first.
North Dakotans who live east of here have had had several years to hone their flood-fighting skills. Except for a scare in Bismarck two years during a Missouri River ice jam, we have been fairly immune from floods. It is different this year, with the entire Missouri River Basin threatened with flooding of historic proportions.
For the past week, residents living near the Missouri River have scrambled to protect their homes and remove their possessions before scheduled water releases from Garrison Dam reach us by the weekend. And, National Guard troops and construction crews have have been building dikes and levees throughout our towns to stop the water.
Grateful that our home is not in the threatened part of town, my husband, Rick, and I felt an obligation to respond to the calls for volunteers at one of Bismarck-Mandan's "sandbags central." Our community has a daunting task ahead of us -- fill 4 million more sandbags by Thursday. We drove to the shopping mall and a shuttle bus took us to where volunteers were needed. There, we were directed to the Sandbag Spider, a 12-chute machine that is fed sand by an auger, which then distributes sand to the bags below each chute.
We took our place at Chute #2. I was one of two putting a bag under the chute which, when about half full, I passed down the assembly line to Rick. He handed the bag off to another, who then passed it on to a row of volunteers grabbing the bags and stacking them on the waiting trucks or flatbeds.
I figure I filled about a bag a minute, and with two of us at the chute, that would be 120 or so in an hour. Take that times the Spider's 12 chutes and extend over a 24-hour period, and the numbers are impressive. All around us were other volunteers, who were tackling piles of sand with their shovels.
Three hours went by quickly, as we visited with those near us and watched in fascination as the big sand trucks dumped the sand on the ground, to be picked up by a front-end loader, dropped into the hoppers and moved to the auguers. Unfortunately, the sand was wet, making it sluggish as it worked its way to us. This required two National Guardsmen perched at the top of the Spider to pound on the chutes to keep the sand moving.
It was easy to get distracted and forget the urgency of keeping a bag under the chute at all times. But, being part of a finely-tuned operation like this was something I will never forget. The attitude of the volunteers was memorable, with their good cheer and dedication, despite working in a wet drizzle. And, to honor the day that we were there, we observed a Memorial Day moment of silence at 3 p.m.
I hope we can get out again before Thursday to fill more bags. It's the least we can do. And in the weeks ahead, as every sandbag will be put to the test to keep the flood waters at bay, I know I did a very small part at my position under Chute #2!