Muckbusters -- October 24, 2015

This is another incredible story coming out of the Bakken. Our older granddaughter is taking a class in "Global Problem Solving." Currently they are leaning about "Disappearing Languages" but next week they start "Natural Disasters." She was talking to me about ideas on how to find, rescue, and clean-up after major flooding. And then this story in The Dickinson Press appears.

Apparently Company C, operating in the Bakken, sent a team down to help clean up South Carolina after major flooding. From the story:

Flood waters had completely engulfed the church from rooftop to floor.

As these waters receded, they left behind the typical slime and muck, scattered with random debris, that might have taken weeks to clean by conventional methods.

But sometimes there isn’t weeks to save a building. As seen during Hurricane Katrina, it doesn’t take long for the cruddy material to plant molds in a building that make it forevermore uninhabitable.

With a hydrovac, however, a project that might have taken weeks and weeks with the hands of many volunteers was accomplished in a couple hours with a team of just four.

Church said a few C Company employees are from the South Carolina area. With oil prices being down, they knew the company could spare a truck. The technology is ideal for helping in the cleanup, so they asked to take some equipment down to help out, and the company gave its blessing.

Some background:

A team of hydroexcavators from C Company in Williston are among hundreds of volunteers who have poured into South Carolina to help with cleanup as flood waters recede by using the hydrovacs that use a combination of water jets followed by high-power vacuum to pull material up or away quickly and efficiently. It can even be used underground without harming anything buried.

The technology is often used in the Oil Patch of North Dakota  for cleaning up oil spills, pipeline inspections, slot trenching, frozen ground excavation, telephone line repair and pit cleaning. With this equipment, the crews have turned many cleanup jobs that might have taken weeks into just hours.

The Williston company’s highly specialized equipment  is uncommon in the South, and really anywhere outside of oil patches.

Very, very impressive. Much, much more at the link. A great story to read. 

I think I have a story for my granddaughter for "Global Problem Solving." Jeb Bush should visit South Carolina and help out. Isn't South Carolina one of the early primary states?