• El Niño Sandbag Event 2.0

At the last El Niño sandbag prep day (November 14th) a lot was learned about  how to keep the lines short/moving, and it was incorporated into today's sandbag-a-thon.

Click to enlarge images. 

First thing the city did differently is that they prepped 500 bags the night before. Second, the volunteers were there filling, lugging, sorting or loading bags in allotments of 5 rows by 5 columns (that's 25 for those a bit slow on the uptick) irrespective to the number of autos in line. Last time it seemed that bags were being filled as they were needed, but not this time. ☺

As you can see from the photos above, the first large pile of sand was completely eliminated before lunch. There was a very diligent group of workers (three donated by PV Maintenance) and volunteers. Most of the volunteers were from Elsinore High School, along with some parents and another student from David A Brown middle school. Others were from the local LDS church. I met one missionary whose home country is Costa Rica.

A different angle of the lines of pre-filled bags seen in the panoramic photo above.

When a truck, or car, arrived they checked in with CERT Member Paul Bakeman (had to make sure they were from Wildomar).

Then they would drive up to the appropriate group of bags, and volunteers... which included Wildomar Mayor Ben Benoit and Mayor Pro-Tem Bridgette Moore, would load the bags in under a minute. The latter worked WAY TOO HARD, *IMN2BHO, from before the opening bell to well past lunch when I skedaddled out of there.

Wildomar residents, the Dave Masters family, brought a couple of dozen sandwiches of various types, cookies, oranges and water bottles for the volunteers. Pretty cool indeed.

Starbucks coffee, waters and pizza (at lunch) were provided by the city. I was hearing chatter that there may be another of these sandbag events early next year —depending on how the unpredictable El Niño treats Wildomar.

By the time I left, with more than 3 hours left for bag pickup, more than 80 residents had taken advantage of this program.

*IMN2BHO (In My Never To Be Humble Opinion)

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“You are what you do, not what you say you'll do.” 

― C.G. Jung

Wildomar Rap tip of the day: If you're 50 years old, stop pretending that your body can still do what it did when it was 30 years old.