Cadets perform flood relief work in South Dakota

  • Published
  • By John Van Winkle
  • Air Force Academy Public Affairs
PIERRE, S.D. --  Sandbags and flood debris made for a tiring and muddy two days off for approximately 150 Air Force Academy cadets Sept. 29 through Oct. 2.

The cadets travelled to South Dakota to spend the weekend participating in a flood cleanup operation as part of the Academy's Cadet Service Learning program. The Cadet Wing performs approximately 40,000 hours of community service each academic year around the Pikes Peak Region and the nation.

Two years of heavy precipitation, followed by greater-than-average runoff from the Montana snowpack into Missouri River tributaries set the conditions this summer for flooding along the Missouri River. Among the communities affected were Fort Pierre and the South Dakota capitol of Pierre. The two communities border opposite sides of the Missouri River, just five miles downstream from the Ohae Dam.

"This flood is an unusual type of flood," said South Dakota governor Dennis Daugaard. "Normally, we get 65 cubic feet per second of water being released by the dam. At its peak this summer, we had 110 cubic feet per second."

"Normally, you have this onslaught of tremendous water, for which you have little or no preparation time. Then after a few days, maybe a week, the water's gone," said the Governor.

Instead, the water remained high for weeks.

"In the beginning, volunteerism was high, but so was the job ahead of us," Daugaard said. "We really couldn't take down all the sandbags, and then school began, so a lot of that young, strong labor force wasn't available."

The need became known to the command section of the Academy's Cadet Squadron 38, who organized the journey and solicited volunteers from Cadet Group 4 and from around the entire Cadet Wing.

"It honestly sounded like an adventure," said Cadet 1st Class Amanda Bolton, squadron commander for Cadet Squadron 36, who brought 25 of her squadron with her to South Dakota. "The (Cadet Squadron 38 squadron commander) brought it to me. It sounded like something different from the normal community service that we do, which is local cleanup, and we get to travel a little bit and get the squadron together."

That travel was an adventure. The cadets did an entire day of classes on Thursday, hit the dining facility for dinner and then hopped on three buses at sunset to ride 10 hours at night to reach Pierre.

Arriving early in the pre-dawn hours, the cadets received breakfast from community leaders at the golf course clubhouse, followed by morning briefings about the situation, and the work ahead.

Cadets were then split into small groups at 20 different worksites in the two cities. In Fort Pierre, cadets removed the debris left behind by long-standing flood waters from around the homes of elderly citizens in the Dunes and Frontier Road area, and also helped clean out some flood-damaged basements there.

In Pierre, cadets removed thousands of sandbags that formed primary and secondary berms and makeshift levees around city and historic buildings along the riverfront.
"It's outside doing something, but it's also getting the chance to talk to people in the (squadron)," said Bolton. "During the school year, we're just so busy with academics and sports and so many other things that you really don't get the chance to hang out with your (squadron) mates."

One of the buildings she and several of her squadron members worked on was Pierre's first schoolhouse. This one-room structure dates back to 1881 and is now a museum maintained by the East Pierre Women's Club. The schoolhouse sits just a few yards from the normal river bank and just inside the sandbag levee, but needed extra measures protect it. So a second levee of sandbags was put up in June, which still encircled the schoolhouse.

Cadets excavated those sandbags one at a time. Most of the sandbags were solid, but a different brand of sandbags that were used was lacking in tensile strength once each was moved. Then they tore or outright disintegrated, adding a nice sheen of mud to the cadets' ABUs and adding to their entertainment in the process.

The sandbags would vary in weight, anywhere between 30 and 80 pounds each depending on who filled them and if the soil was waterlogged. So the cadet moving the sandbags down the relay line would call out what they were passing on, saying "heavy, light, leaky bag" to warn the next in line of what was headed their way, even saying "it's bleeding" for a bag that was losing all integrity.

The cadets took the mud in stride and kept the event entertaining, starting discussions on how sandbags were preferable to certain calculus, chemistry or physics classes they are taking this semester, or adding their vocals to the music playing from a nearby car stereo.

Shortly after lunch, the sandbags were removed from the schoolhouse, and cadets were moving furniture back into the tiny, one-room building. By the end of the day, the local tourist attraction was ready to receive visitors. But by the time anyone signed the visitors' ledger, the cadets had already moved on to subsequent worksites down the river, for there were thousands and thousands more sandbags awaiting their attention.

After the first day's sweaty and muddy work, cadets were fed at the local golf course by the leaders of the Pierre long-term recovery team, then given a place to cleanup, were treated to a movie and a given a place to sleep.

On Saturday the cadets got the additional treat of watching a taped version of the Air Force-Navy football game. The service academy rivalry game was broadcast Saturday afternoon on a national network, but the cadets in South Dakota were busy moving more sandbags and debris. But city leaders taped the game, which let the cadets watch it in its nail-biting entirety. The game ended in a 35-34 overtime win on a blocked kick for Air Force, securing Air Force bragging rights over Navy for the next year.

The concept of Service Learning is to offer cadets character development programs which emphasize one of the Academy's central core values, "Service Before Self." The Cadet Service Learning program attempts to take this core value from the theoretical concepts of the classroom to actual experiences with the goal of a lifelong internalized "volunteer ethic" and understanding of the value of serving others, particularly in the area of community service, like the flood relief work in South Dakota.

"It's been a really long, hard summer for people here, and they're tired and worn out," said Daugaard. "And yet to have all these Air Force Academy cadet here, at the peak of their physical ability, means a lot to us. We are so grateful to have them here."