OT: flood and youth story

I have a good friend in Moorhead. They live in the area south of I94 and west of hwy 75, the part that has now been evacuated. I talked to him last night and they had just shut down the lift stations and told everyone to evacuate by this morning, if a dike fails they re in between the primary and secondary levys. Some left others stayed to try and sandbag around their houses.

He called me at about 8pm when him and two neighbors decided to sandbag around their three homes, instead of going around each one seperately. I m about 120 miles away and was getting ready to head up there with my skid loader and a couple friends to help him. Honestly, it sounded like kind of a losing battle. I had just got everything fueled up and was going in to tell my wife and kids goodbye and my phone rang. My buddy said he just had a bunch of help show up out of nowhere, he actually sounded pretty excited. I decided to stay put, and told him we were ready to go at a moments notice if he needed help.

He called me at 9 this morning, said they finished sandbagging at about 5:30am and was now leaving to be with his wife and kids. They started out with him, two neighbors, a friend and his son.

The son goes to MSU, and apparantly texted a couple other friends to come help. Within what he said was minutes, there was 20-30 college kids there throwing sandbags. Alot of them had been either filling or throwing sandbags all day already. He never got many of their names and is still alittle overwhelmed by the fact that these kids came out of nowhere and did in a few hours what would have taken them at least a good day to do alone.

Just thought this was too cool not to share. BW

there is still good in the youth of America

good story.. They should have their names listed and a write up in the paper about them. Kinda takes away from the baggy pants and crooked cap image.


Dave

We had some flooding down here on the Minnesota a decade ago or so, pretty bad.

Highschool kids were let out of school for 2 days if they wanted to bag. I'd say they did a real job on that, not many slackers. Really worked.

I helped a day & 1/2, don't know who's back yard I was in, went along a couple blocks.

I helped one fellow from out of town, he had moved into a building that used to be the city pumphouse, was starting some artsywartsy business. He was mighty crabby, mad at everyone that his building that he was renting with city subsidized funds was not getting diked, and he had to move his stuff out. (It was pretty isolated building, and was waterproof other than his stuff that he hadn't really moved into yet - just boxes he had unloaded the months before...) Had a pickup that was held together with bungie cord and a plywood trailer that he was putting his computer equipment in, and was a - well, like a lost flower child, he was a character. I stayed & helped him, but was really wanting to just leave & go help folks that would appreciate it.

Still have the tee shrit, we bought them commemorating the event, helped raise funds for folks. Think the town came through pretty good, it was an experience to realize water taller than your head when you climbed the bags.

The trouble with Fargo area is how high it has to be, that is a heap of pressure on soggy sand bags, just hard for those walls to hold up to several days of that much pressure.

--->Paul

That is some great help from people that he doesnt even know. The will power of people is amazing if there is an emergency.

And the yahoo's that run the city of Detroit cant even pick up the garbage or plow the snow off the streets.

But y'know, it was three teenagers in Detroit that restored my faith in teenagers. Back on Sept 19, 2003, a tanker truck on one of the Detroit freeways swerved to avoid hitting another truck, tipping and crashing in the process. A fire started quickly, and three teenagers that saw the crash stopped, ran up to the burning truck cab and pulled the driver to safety just a few seconds before the truck was fully engulfed. They showed the kids on the news the next day, and they looked like your typical inner city Detroit kids, but to that truck driver they were sure heroes.

BW...That is TRULY a Great Human relations Story and in this Day and Time deffinately needs to be Shared! Thanks for doing that.Larry KF4LKU

There are good people everywhere. As far as Detroit residents, most are good people. A lot are elderly and cannot do much, they cannot sell their homes and cannot afford to go anywhere else. Most of the crime is between criminals. Even when you hear of houses being shot up, and kids being hurt, it is because somebody was selling dope outta that house. The criminals usually don't bother the "civilians" - there is no money in it, and those people call the police. I was born in Detroit, lived there for awhile, worked there for several years. And still go downtown for Mexican or Greek, or BBQ. Never had a problem. One problem Detroit has is that the whole state has been shrinking or growing very slowly for many years - 50 years?. Other large cities the real estate gets more valuable over time. Here, with the whole region depopulating, the house prices now are lower than they were 40 years ago. No "getrification". At one point in the late 70's Chrysler employed about 50K in Detroit, GM close to 50K. Chrysler doesn't employ anybody in Detroit now, and GM maybe a 3K. That leaves a huge hole. But whatever!!
Take care!!

I guess I am confused, the only I94 and 75 intersection I know of is in downtown Detroit and I was just there today, there wasn't any flooding. I guess there is a 75 in ND also.

There's more good kids than bad kids in this country - we just hear of the bad ones on the news.

Very good story - thanks for sharing.

Paul

I94 and hwy 75 (or 8th street).

US highway 75. Runs parallel to I-29, but on the MN side.