With more flooding expected, community pitches in to fill sandbags

As water from melting snow rose throughout the Lincoln Valley, and with an estimated month of high water still in the forecast, volunteers turned out in force last week to help fill an estimated 10,000 sandbags for residents who need them.

The sandbag-filling operation began at the Lincoln Volunteer Fire Department's Station 3 east of town, but as the sand stored there ran low, it shifted to Hooper Park to take advantage of the piles of gravel and dirt from street sweeping operations that had been deposited there by Lewis and Clark County at the request of Fire Chief Zach Muse.

The operation picked up steam Wednesday, as volunteers including Lewis and Clark County Sheriff Leo Dutton and his wife Luci, began showing up to fill sandbags by hand. By early evening the numbers had dwindled, but Skip Eby and Sandy Caudill were still there, working alongside Marty and Mona Fitzgerald - who had been at it since 1 p.m. that day - and Kathy Tams and Luke Shimer.

"I wanted to do it to help our neighbors," Caudill said.

The method of volunteers filling individual sandbags by hand quickly evolved. By mid-week a variety of tools, such as PVC scoops and cut down traffic cone 'funnels,' supported in an old ladder, were on hand to speed up the process. By last Thursday students from Lincoln school and the other volunteers had filled some 2000 sandbags. Derek Perez, Lincoln School's head custodian and a LVFD Fire Captain, noted in a May 10 Facebook post that Lincoln students filled 800 sandbags in three hours.

By Friday, as the rain that had been in the forecast threatened, the effort turned nearly industrial.

Dwane Blankenship with Bench Industries in Great Falls fabricated and donated a steel hopper-style sandbag filler with two chutes.

"He has a cabin up here and he likes to help when he can. That's his area of expertise, he saw the need and started building," Muse said. Blankenship has also helped modify the device to better deal with both wet sand and the pine needles found in the street sweeping that tended to clog it, he said.

In addition to deliveries of sand from both Lance Stalnaker and CAP Paving, people and equipment also showed up in force to help.

CAP Paving, owned by the Schneiderhan family, brought in an asphalt patch truck, which a backhoe kept filled with sand and gravel. A spout on the back of the truck, designed to allow poured asphalt in controlled batches, served as a rapid sandbag filler that allowed half a dozen people to fill and prepare sandbags, in an assembly-line fashion, at a rate of up to one every two seconds.

Muse said the Schneiderhans, whose property in the McClellan Gulch area was among the first to be affected by flooding, got help from the community during the initial sandbag filling operation, wanted to pay the community back.

Muse estimated that between 60 to 70 volunteers from Lincoln, Great Falls, Helena, Missoula and even Belt, filled 3500 sandbags on Friday and another 4500 Saturday.

Muse said the dry weather early this week gave them a bit of a breather, but he noted the town is a long way from seeing the end of either the high-water or the need for volunteers to fill sandbags. Although there is a stockpile of filled sandbags currently on hand - which are palleted and ready for pick up or delivery – he doesn't expect them to last long once water starts rising again.

"We'll burn through those sandbags sitting down there real fast," he said.

Anyone interested in volunteering to fill more sandbags is still welcome to lend a hand down at Hooper Park.