We got a job at McKinney Falls State Park in Austin, TX for Nov/Dec/Jan. We are the night campground hosts Mon-Thur. Pretty easy gig with lots of time to play during the day.
When we arrived for our orientation briefing the state park was in a tizzy. The night before they experienced a record flood, 41' above normal flood level.
Above picture is the visitor center where we were supposed to have our orientation
The entry way was chest deep in water.
It is difficult to imagine that those little bushes in the center of the picture are actually trees that are 40-50' tall.
One of the restrooms got washed pretty good.
It didn't take long for the water to begin to recede. By 2pm there was 1/2 the flow that they had at 9am. And so the clean up began.
First was removing the flood damaged stuff from the visitor center. They also had a half a year supply of toilet paper stashed in this building. Can anyone guess the weight of a case of toilet paper after it has been soaked in water overnight?
Next came dragging the flood debris away from the picnic tables.
Some noticed that there was a little bit of debris that had lodged in the trees at the height of the flood. So we used pole saws, hooks, and a rope with a weight on it to drag the debris down.
The tricky part was getting out from underneath it before it could get you. Out of 100+ trees I was too slow only twice, I took a 4"x2' branch on the hard hat, and another 2" branch on the forearm. No real damage.
Some of the piles got really big.
Barbara was using her rock climbing skills to set a rope on some snags we couldn't reach.
The state parked closed for about 10 days. Barbara got to do gate/guard duty, allowing cleanup people in while sending users and media away.
Lots of hard work. I put in full 8 hour days of manual labor. It was a great experience to watch the Americorp people work. They had a team of 20-30 year olds working chainsaws to cut the debris so bobcats could move it to collection spots.
They were not allowed to cut anything above their heads because it was too dangerous. So the state park volunteers, 58-88 year olds, took on the task of getting the debris down so the kids could cut it up.
There was only one injury (other than minor cuts and bruises), a log rolled onto one of the Americorp kids and hurt his ankle. We never did find out if it was broken or just sprained.
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