Our thursday afternoon efforts! The "small" river
It's hard to see, but the river was already 1/2 way up the trees!
About a week and a half ago Matt and I had the Opportunity to go to Fargo and help with the sandbagging there. For those of you that may not know, the Red River Valley area is having the worst flood in over a hundred years!
We left thursday morning and jumped right into action that afternoon. We went to a church where they were busing the volunteers to the areas where they needed help. Matt and I spent the afternoon and evening in a residential area that had a previously small river running behind the houses. The small river had turned into a BIG river and the levels kept rising. They had a sandbag wall already built but the reports of how high the river would crest kept rising so we had to keep adding sandbags to make the wall higher. It was HARD work! I didn't expect those sandbags to weigh so much! After a couple of hours of moving sandbags around we were finally done and head back to the hotel for the night. The only problem was that most of the roads around us were flooded so they shut them down. Our group of about 50 volunteers stood outside in 20 degree weather for 2 hours waiting for the buses to find a way to come back and pick us up! Some of the people who lived in the area where very grateful for our service and opened up their garages for us to stay warm and even made hot chocolate and sandwhiches!
Friday, after a good nights sleep we were ready to get back to work. Most of the roads were closed so we couldn't be bused out anymore so we headed to the Fargodome to help fill the sandbags. That was amazing! There were huge trucks bringing in the sand and just dumping it on the floor so that people could grab shovels and start filling the sandbags. Once a sandbag was filled you passed it onto the next person who tied it up, and then down the line of people who then stacked them onto pallets. There were 3 MILLION sandbags filled!!! Matt and I only stayed a couple of hours there because there were so many people we were stepping on each other. After that we headed home and it was a good thing we left when we did, the police had shut down I-94 between Fargo and Moorhead and were using it as an evacuation route only. It was fun trying to navigate our way home using back roads.
I was truly grateful for this experience. Our family has already been blessed because of it. I am also truly grateful for all of you who have reached out to Matt and I since he has been layed off. We love each and every one of you!
