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it was just three years ago when heavy rains forced Squaw Creek out of its banks
flooding parts of the Iowa State Campus for days
pretty hectic and kind of scary scary
it was a first for us to have some facilities be inundated with flood water
a giant picture hanging in the general services building shows the places on
campus hit the hardest we need to be more
more prepared. and apply what we've learned
what we've experienced
that's why iowa State officials offered a volunteer Sandbagging class
to nearly sixty people , mainly ISU employees
I've asked a number of people if they know how to sandbag and the answer has always been yes.
but as i experienced couple years ago in reality it wasn't the case it's not a
difficult process
but there are keyy do's and don'ts and how to do it correctly
Typical sandbagging
procedure process
you have people manning shovels, people holding the bag several people
transferring those bags
from point a to point b_ where you would need to
to build your structure needed people actually buildint the structure.
throughout the class instructors teach the common mistakes of sandbagging
you ask somebody
how do you typically fill a sandbag
most will say the fuller the better! But in reality you don't want to do that.
you want it 1/3 - 1/2 full.
and leave the rest of the bag as room for that sand to flow. Then you place it on the ground and
stomp on it.
you want to squeeze that sand
to all those crevices. Make it water tight. Another
common mistake is building the levee
stacking the
sandbags
uh... without much thought into how the needs to be done
the sand bags need to be a lot like a brick wall so that they
interlaced with one another. that's the best way to keep
properly watertight
We also want to make sure the sandbags are out away
from the building
six to eight feet that enables them to put a pump behind there in case the water does
start seeping in there and also keep the pressure off the
building wall
if the building if this air bags are up against the building
then we've got the weight of the sandbags and the weight of the water all
pressing against the side of the building organizers were surprised by the
response for this first sandbag training event. the response was
huge! we had a room full.
and we have a lot of people that have a vested interest in this a lot of us have
been at the university long enough we've seen this happen numerous times and they
hope this short afternoon class will have a long-lasting effect
should flooding be a problem on campus in the future. We've become the first
responders
then why not be fully prepared
the university has dad
damage from
flood waters
this is just one of those efforts that we're trying to make to mitigate some of that
damages we could have.