You Can't Just Sit There
With water coming up as high as 7 or 8 feet in Coralville, many sandbagging efforts now seem futile. But you can't just sit there, you've got to do something while the water is slowly rising all around you. The sandbag wall pictured below is actually a lot taller than it looks.
There were also several instances when sandbagging when sandbagging plans would change that would render an entire huge wall obsolete. While sandbagging at the Marriot one night, I remember coming upon a very nicely laid sandbag wall about 20 feet out from the building. Obviously, a large crew of people had spent considerable time building what they thought was the best wall only to have our crew come along and systematically disassemble it and reassemble it elsewhere. There was also a 6 - 7 foot tall wall made around the entire parking lot of the Convention Center that became obsolete as the waters rose.
One aspect of these walls is that they may become useful again as the water recedes to form a barrier to keep water out with pumping. This could speed the recovery process, so not all was lost in some cases.
