Sandbagging a Flooded Town Street

A flooded street runs between two rows of brick buildings, already lined with a long, curving wall of sandbags. On the left, a hopper feeds sand onto a conveyor belt where workers in orange vests fill bags and pile them beside wheelbarrows and a small mountain of loose sand. Down the middle of the street, a bucket brigade of volunteers passes filled bags hand to hand toward the rising water. A striped tent shelters a table with a spread-out map, where someone points out the next stretch to reinforce. Near a shopfront, a resident hands a rolled rug and folded clothes out through a propped-open door, while two cats find dry perches on wooden crates. On the drier cobblestones, two workers mop up a bright red spill beside patterned rugs laid out to dry. Every sandbag in the wall sits stacked the same way, ready to be counted and matched one by one.