Wind River Heavy Machinery Students Help Prevent Flooding
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Wind River Heavy Machinery Students Help Prevent Flooding

Wind River Job Corps students in the heavy machinery trade recently used their skills to keep local residents safe. The threat of flooding along the Wind River in Wyoming has recently increased because the flood wall is beginning to erode.

Wind River Job Corps student Amber Knight told a reporter with KCWY what the students were doing to help.

“Well right now we’re laying rocks in the river right now trying to prevent the flooding, getting ready, helping out Hudson, we did Lander, just out here helping the community.”

Scott Belschner of the International Union of Operating Engineers said, “We’re putting the rocks along the bank of the river for when it floods or when the water raises up so it doesn’t erode the bank away any more than it already has at the end of the wall, they can’t take the wall any further so they’re putting rocks there at the end.”

Students used the opportunity to practice the skills they’ve learned in the heavy machinery program.

“Doing disaster relief actually involves a lot of heavy equipment because we got to be able to move all these rocks and lay them where they need to be put and then we need to load sand into the bays up there and do sandbags.”