Volunteers step up to help flooded town

Gary Jackson of Norfolk, a Roberts Dairy route driver, said it was amazing to watch hundreds of people descend on the sand-bagging operation and volunteer to help. People came in pickup trucks. They towed trailers to help carry sand bags.

"You see it (volunteerism) in small towns, but Norfolk is 25,000 people. It's a little bigger,'' he said.

Jackson said the Lions Club put out a call for volunteers.

"I was coming to help anyway,'' he said.

Sisters Alicia Beaty, 18, and Ashley Cordier, 19, both of Norfolk, were among hundreds of young people who turned out. Beaty and Cordier filled and lifted sand bags around the Affiliated Foods distribution center for about six hours Tuesday night. Their father, Bob Beaty works at the facility.

Doug Cunningham, government relations officials with Affiliated Foods, thanked dozens of volunteers who helped bag, stack and restack thousands of sand bags around the company's distribution center.

"It was unbelievable,'' he said. "People just showed up and said they wanted to help. It was hectic. We couldn't have done it without them.''

Norfolk Mayor Sue Fuchtman made an estimated 52-mile round trip Tuesday evening to pick up 10,000 empty sand bags. The bags were in storage behind a growing pool of Elkhorn River floodwater just four blocks from where they were needed in Norfolk, but it wasn't safe to attempt to reach the site using city streets.

So Fuchtman drove around the floodwater by going west to Battle Creek, Neb., and circling back to Norfolk via country roads to pick up the bags. Then she retraced the route to deliver the bags.

Dennis Houston, president of the Norfolk Area Chamber of Commerce, was at a kickoff party Tuesday evening for Norfolk's annual Great American Comedy Festival when he announced that volunteer help was needed to fill and stack sand bags.

The party moved to the streets of Norfolk. - David Hendee

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