Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Back from Fargo Sandbagging


The Red River is running at about 16 ft, and flood stage is 18, according to a Fargo city worker with whom I was loading a pallet of sandbags today.

Fargo is aiming to prepare 3 million bags to have ready as the snow melts and raises the river, which actually flows north through the city instead of south into other rivers.

Over 70 folks from Sanford Health, Sioux Falls bussed up today, and I impressed a couple of my parishioners onto a work detail.

It was a touching day - emergency service folks, high school and college students, jail inmates, and all kinds of other people were at work. The Salvation Army served food (which I believe was funded by Subway and the Fargo employees credit union), from a trailer with the sign

"WE RESPOND TO NATURAL DISASTERS WITH ACTS OF GOD"

What was most touching was having Fargo fireman and police coming up and thanking us profusely as we left - like we do anything they should have to acknowledge.

Pray for Fargo - especially for a slow thaw of their snow and ice.

2 comments:

The Archer of the Forest said...

Excellent, glad that went well. I wish I could have gone, but things just didn't work out.

Fr. Chip, SF said...

Tim+,

Nice smile. Unfortunate that these 'every year occurances' cannot be resolved in some other way...maybe lt KJ-S issue a proclamation?