TRENCHES: SANDBAGS ARE FILLED FURIOUSLY

STE. GENEVIEVE Hundreds of people were filling sandbags on the Valle High School parking lot Sunday afternoon when the first sign appeared that something was wrong.

National Guard troops who methodically had been loading pallets packed with sandbags onto the backs of trucks suddenly began throwing the bags ferociously into the business ends of front-end loaders.

All those pallets neatly arranged in the middle of the parking lot swiftly disappeared as the National Guard went to war with the Valle Spring levee break.

Soon, word flashed around the lot. Volunteers, many of whom had been working hard much of the day, could be seen setting their jaws and stepping up the pace.

The effort in the sandbagging trenches is sweaty and backbreaking. Veterans come prepared with gloves and taped fingers because the bags and ties especially the rough-hewn plastic ones gnaw at the skin.

The bags were being filled with "screenings," a cement-like byproduct of the process used by the town's limestone company. When wet, screenings turn into a conglomerate.

Until Sunday afternoon's breach, screenings were being credited with keeping Ste. Genevieve's levees intact when others were failing.

Most of the volunteers are from the area, or at least Missouri, but flood-fighting volunteers have come to Ste. Genevieve from all over the U.S. A dozen volunteers are here right now from Dublin, Ohio.

Many have been fighting the river for more than a month. They exchange first names and hometowns and try to keep each other from becoming discouraged or overheated.

Among them Sunday was a senior couple from Tulsa, Okla., who had brought relief supplies from their community weeks ago. Deanna and Dee had stayed a few days to work, went back to Tulsa, and then decided this is where they belong.

They are living in their van.

A family from North Carolina who showed up with cameras Sunday afternoon and ended up swinging shovels.

A sturdy man named Jim who lives 11 miles from Ste. Genevieve was there filling sandbags Sunday, one day after his mother's funeral.