WHITEWATER REGION (Westmeath) — Saturday June 22nd was a call for volunteers needed to remove sandbags from two locations as organized by the Flood Recovery Committee of Neil Nicholson, Vince Gervais, Bonny Johnson, Debby Lemaire and Bob Grylls.
The two primary sites for this day were Site 1 at Sunset Trail and Site 2 at Greenway Drive. About 70 hard-working volunteers were on hand to make it happen, including 12 volunteers from Petawawa.
37,000 sandbags were removed from Site 1 and 12,000 at Site 2. In total, there were about 4 bob cats, 6 dump trailers, 2 dump trucks, 2 tractors, and a backhoe enabling our volunteers.
There was plenty of support from the Knights of Columbus, a service organization, who provided all the financial backing of the event, funding the meals, fuel for the equipment as well as any rentals. They BBQ’ed for the sandbaggers at both sites. Ken MacDonald and Harold Marcotte were the two Knights in charge.
The ‘free’ breakfast for everyone in the community was expected to fill about 200 hungry arrivals. However, only about 80 showed up.
A small survey of area residents indicated that the majority felt they weren’t entitled to a free breakfast, despite all the promotion of it and spreading by word of mouth about it.
That’s our community – thinking of others first, as did so many who did have flood damage – always saying there’s some worse off than us.
You can volunteer to help with flood relief by reaching out to a member of the Flood Recovery Committee for Whitewater Region.
