June 14, 2008 - Oakville, IA Flood

The sand bagging operation was going well but more four wheelers were coming in from nearby towns to help build the levy. By now Tim and Seth had arrived from Middleton with the other grapple truck. Since the grapple truck has a 60-cubic yard dump trailer able to hold and dump 80,000 pounds, we decided to use it to carry thousands of sand bags from the bagging operation to the levy. Since only one man is needed to run the grapple truck, the Team was able to move enough sand bags to keep another 100 four wheelers working.

Things were going well, and the spirits of the community were high. We were making progress, and the levy was going up just in time. Every once in a while I would stop and look around me at the people working together to help save each other’s homes. From early morning until late at night no one stopped working.

The water was getting higher. I recommended to the community leaders to move the sand bagging operation farther outside of town. I did not like that so many young kids were making sandbags in an area that would be difficult to evacuate should the levy break. I did not want to be the one sending a bad vibe but none of this would be worth it if people got hurt. People are more important than property.

The leaders agreed, and we began to move sand, bags and equipment outside of town. We set up the new sand bagging operation in a local church parking lot. In the meantime, Tim was out on the dirt bike with the Sat Phone, GPS, and GMRS radios monitoring the levy. It was his job to alert the Team and the community if there was any sign of the levy breaching. This would either give us time to fix it or to get everyone evacuated.