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Sandbaging in Palo: A First Hand Account
Volunteers In Service To America, or VISTAs, have to be ready at a moment’s notice to drop whatever it is they’re doing and provide services in an emergency. That moment’s notice came at about 2:30 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 27, when we received the call that the city of Palo was in need of sandbaggers. Within five minutes, I had left my office at St. Wenceslaus Church. It was like being a superhero, an ordinary person who answered the call for help promptly by changing into their costume and banding together with other good guys to defeat the evil forces that threatened the well-being of citizens. 43 VISTAs gathered at the Community Recovery Center, where we were told where to go and given ponchos and boots to wear. Carpools were then formed to go over to Palo.
As I made my way into town in my car with four other people, it continued to pour rain and we knew it was bad when we saw giant lakes in areas where there was supposed to be grass. At approximately 3 p.m., we arrived at the fire station, where we immediately started helping to fill sandbags, tie them, and load them onto trucks so they could be transported to areas where flooding became a real concern. After a while, operations moved to the former site of the Palo Community Center. More people came to help us out at the community center site as they got off from work and school. Media crews were also there to document the volunteer effort. Overall, we spent about three hours in Palo before we ran out of sand and headed back to Cedar Rapids.