National Guard, Community Work Together to Fight Flood

CARROLLTON, IL, UNITED STATES

06.06.2019

Story by Sgt. LeAnne Withrow 

139th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment

CARROLLTON – Rising floodwaters and a merciless sun have been a potent combination all along the banks of the swollen Illinois and Mississippi Rivers where hundreds of Illinois National Guardsmen work diligently to protect flood-prone communities in support of Operation Ready response 2019. As temperatures and humidity rose on June 6, 2019, civilian volunteers and members of Company C, 341st Military Intelligence Battalion based in Chicago, IL., transported and laid sandbags along critical points on the levee in the Hartwell Levee and Drainage District north of Carrollton, IL.
“The fact of the matter is,if you want to join the Guard and really help people in your community, this is it.” said Army Sgt. Jacob Bultmann, a soldier of eight years with the 341st MI Bn. and a Petersburg IL., resident. “This is a bigger deal than deploying to combat for us, it’s what separates the guard from active duty.”
Local volunteers and civilians from the Hartwell Levee and Drainage district brought all-terrain vehicles to help ferry sandbags along the levee to be emplaced by soldiers working in cycles - one crew loading bags, one laying them, and another taking refuge from the sun.
“Without these soldiers we’d be in bad shape,” said John Bolen, the District Station Manager for the past seven years and a Carrollton native. “It’s amazing what they’ve done. There’s only a few of us that live here, so we can’t do it all ourselves.”
Bolen said the floodwaters were worse than they’d been in decades, saying he’d never seen flooding at current levels since 1993.

• Date Taken: 06.06.2019
• Date Posted: 08.16.2019 17:41
• Story ID: 326190
• Location: CARROLLTON, IL, US
• Hometown: CHICAGO, IL, US