Where the Flood's Sandbags Went to Die

Yes, 20,000 sandbags saved Old Town Eureka's Central Avenue during the recent flood, and 2000 or so volunteers packed and stacked them, and were heroes enough to unstack them--but what happens to all those heavy wet bags when they aren't needed anymore? This. They were heaped 15 feet high and maybe 50 feet long, with an earth-moving machine scooping up bunches of them and dumping them into a dumpster--in the Eureka Community Center parking lot. I went there for a walk around its woods. It had never crossed my mind where sandbags might end up.

The Underwater Bank

Parts of Eureka, Mo. flooded that never had before; Central Avenue in Old Town Eureka got dunked in 3 to 4 feet of water -- enough so that camera crews floated down the street. On the other side, facing Highway 109, and across from the post office, is a strip mall that includes an Ace Hardware, a jeweler, a weapons dealer, Rockwood Bank, and a St. Anthony's health-care office that was formerly my Medicine Shoppe #1390, sold to Walgreens but not forgotten. The saving grace was that nobody was hurt. The water quickly receded, and yesterday, a bright sunny day that belied all that had happened, I was on the strip-mall parking lot watching as workers emptied the bank of its ruined bank-type wooden desks and furniture, tore out the carpeting, and so on.