People wanting help protecting their homes from possible flooding found out the city was out of sandbags Wednesday, and Public Works crews say they didn’t expect the bags to go so fast. Hundreds of cars greeted Transportation and Public Works employees early Wednesday morning as people lined up for free sandbags ahead of this week’s heavy rains.<\/p>\n
But in less than two hours, Chief Operations Officer Juan Cadena and his crews had to turn people away at both distribution sites.<\/p>\n
“A lot of people show up here before 8 o’clock,” Cadena said, “And so we had a great response this morning. Citizens came out and took advantage of the opportunity to get the free sandbags. There’s one here at 4100 Columbus Trail, and then we have another location up on far North Fort Worth off of Hillshire Road.”<\/p>\n
Cadena said the city had prepared hundreds of sandbags in advance for residents. All they had to do was enter the makeshift drive-through, show their proof of residency in the City of Fort Worth, and then allow TPW workers to load up to 15 bags into their vehicle.<\/p>\n
“We have 500 to 700 sandbags available that we had already prepared and were ready for and have prepared for citizens to take as needed,” Cadena said.<\/p>\n
By the time homeowners like John Smith arrived, drivers were being turned away, and signs were posted saying the city was out of sandbags.<\/p>\n
“A friend of mine told me about it. So, I said, let me run down there and see, you know. Because, hey, I can’t withstand a flood,” Smith said.<\/p>\n
With the sandbags gone, TPW is now focused on streets and roadways prone to flooding. Field Operations Supervisor Claude Jewett and his crews hit low-lying areas like Old Granbury Road, cleaned debris from storm drains, and posted signs warning drivers to turn around. The same sign can also get help to that area in case of an emergency, according to Jewett.<\/p>\n
“We get advance notice, and we dispatch a crew here, and they will come out and block each side of the road with barricades,” Jewett said.<\/p>\n
TPW crews will also be on emergency standby in case heavy rain brings dangerous high water like the August 2022 driver rescue on West Rosedale Street. There were also storm rescues south of I-30 in October 2022.<\/p>\n
Since the long line of drivers who got free sandbags did not include Smith, he is hoping the rain stays out of his home.<\/p>\n
“Oh, Lord, Jesus. You know, that’s all I can say. Oh, Lord, Jesus,” Smith said.<\/p>\n
Although the free sandbag giveaway was scheduled to end at 5:00 pm, Cadena told WFAA that he did not expect the city to schedule any additional giveaways.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"People wanting help protecting their homes from possible flooding found out the city was out of sandbags Wednesday,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":453188,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[155738,116,118,117,155737,155736,28647,155739],"class_list":["post-453187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-worth","tag-field-operations-supervisor-claude-jewett","tag-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth-headlines","tag-fort-worth-news","tag-john-smith","tag-juan-cadena","tag-public-works","tag-tpw"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=453187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453187\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/453188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=453187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=453187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=453187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}