Sandbag machines help Mid-Missouri step up flood-fighting ability
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
Chris Kelley remembers the hours he put in to filling sandbags during the flood of 1993. He and dozens of others held open bags and shoveled sand for days as the rising waters of the Missouri River creeped into Rocheport. Those volunteer numbers, though, dwindled over time as the flood continued.
Kelley, now the director of Boone County’s Emergency Management Agency, hopes a new purchase can help volunteers and residents fighting future floods. The county recently bought two automatic sandbagging machines for just more than $92,000 this year. The machines dump sand from a hopper down a conveyor belt into a bag someone holds. The person with the bag can then tie it off with another device at the foot of the machine.
Boone County joins just a handful of organizations around Mid-Missouri that own such a machine. The State Emergency Management Agency said it just purchased a machine in 2024 for local agencies to use in case of emergency. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Kansas City District, which covers Mid-Missouri, has six sandbag filling machines -- three that are automatic and three that need manual operation. The St. Louis Corps district has two, while the Little Rock district has just one.
Kelley said the machine will allow Boone County to be more efficient in its response to floods. The two will be kept in different facilities -- one will focus on the northern part of the county and Rocheport, while the other will be housed in southern Boone County to take care of Hartsburg.
He estimated the old method of shoveling sand would create about 3,900 bags in 16 hours. The new machine could fill that number of bags in fewer than three hours. The machines help keep volunteers and other staff working on placing bags and other tasks around a community that needs help.
“Volunteers, as we get in these things, they wear out as they are filling up these sandbags and placing them on the wall,” Kelley said. “So definitely a force multiplier as we get into a flood fight.”
The Corps offers its machines to areas in need when there’s a declared emergency. Mike Dulin, emergency management specialist at the Kansas City District, said the Corps tries to place the machines in places where multiple counties or agencies might get use out of them.
The floods of 2019 required them to use all of their available machines. The Corps’s Seattle District even sent one of its automatic sandbag machines to help that summer.
“It allows people to have more of a rapid response, so it lets people fill more bags quickly at their staging area and transport those bags to where the flood fight is actually occurring,” Dulin said of the machines. “So if they’re trying to sandbag to fill in low spots on a levee system to raise the height of a levee with sandbags, it just allows folks to work more quickly and have those resources more readily available.”
Cole County emergency management director Bill Farr said his county has not yet had to use the automatic sandbag machines. In 2019, he did deliver some empty sandbags for private property owners to fill for protection. Farr said he has had no problems working with SEMA or other nearby local agencies for help if they had a piece of equipment that might be helpful.
“You look around the state, there’s not many communities that have these,” Kelley said of Boone County’s machines. “And we’re very blessed to have these resources for our citizens.”
