Photo By Sgt. 1st Class Robert Jordan | North Carolina National Guard Soldiers of the 878th Engineer Company and fuelers of...... read more read more
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ANDREWS, S.C. - North Carolina National Guard (NCNG) Soldiers of the 878th Engineer Company and fuelers of the Forward Support Company, 505th Engineer Battalion deployed to Georgetown County on South Carolina’s coastal plain, Oct. 16, 2015.
County emergency management called on the engineers to repair multiple sections of Indian Hut Road in Andrews, South Carolina, restoring the road for fire, police, emergency management and general transportation needs of the businesses and homes along the more than eight miles threatened by the recent historic floods.
“The reaction time by the Guard, emergency management and the sheriff has been incredible,” said Wayne David Casselman, a lifetime resident of Georgetown County.
The thirty-seven Soldiers of the 878th’s convoy, made up of eight 10-ton dump trucks, travel along the waterlogged and washed-out dirt roads. They keep a steady pace. Drivers check the clearance between the more than 20-foot-long vehicles and the overflowing drainage ditches along the sides of the narrow road.
At each point of major road damage or exposed culvert drainage pipes ton after ton of soil, sand and rock are piled up along Indian Hut Road. Soldiers, guided by hand signals of fellow Soldiers, line up the trucks within inches of the road cuts. Drivers locked brakes, raised the truck bed as more road material fell into place.
The trucks repeated this over and over stopping only for fuel from the tanker tucks parked near by or picking up the next batch of material from local contractors a few miles away.
A Soldier drove a large road grader into place lowering the plow shaped blade. The grader’s blade sliced through the piles blending the material and flattening it until the mud, muck and tangled roots are turned into a passable road.
Leaders kept track of the convoys directing the Soldiers to what load needed to be where and when it should arrive.
This and other NCNG missions are supporting thousands of South Carolina National Guard Soldiers deployed for around the clock flood relief operations.
“I have been here all my life and have never seen anything like this,” said Casselman.
| Date Taken: | 10.16.2015 |
| Date Posted: | 10.17.2015 23:16 |
| Story ID: | 179203 |
| Location: | ANDREWS, SC, US |
| Web Views: | 186 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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