Let's hear it for redneck engineering!

 

I was very pleased to read about an impromptu group of helpers who decided to rebuild a storm-ravaged road in North Carolina.

Coal miners from West Virginia – whom locals have lovingly dubbed the “West Virginia Boys” – moved a mountain in just three days to reopen a 2.7-mile stretch of Highway 64 between Bat Cave and Chimney Rock washed away by Helene.

Chimney Rock residents who fled the hurricane one month ago will now be able to return home for the first time within a few days, months earlier than they expected. 

. . .

Logan Campbell, 37, a volunteer from Mississippi, said the miners embodied the American spirit.

“To see this many wonderful men, women, all races, different political views, none of that matters at all in these situations,” he told The Post.

“Weak people don’t show up for s–t like this, and if they do they don’t last long.

“It’s such a heartwarming thing to see amidst all the heartbreak.

“It gives you so much hope for the American we all want to believe in and the America we want our children to experience.”

. . .

Campbell and his friend Dan Lewis, 41, have been sleeping in tents for the past 17 days volunteering for the residents in the hardest hit towns.

“Different road crews came in and said ‘it’s not doable, the people who live between Bat Cave and Chimney Rock will be trapped in all winter,” said Lewis, who traveled to North Carolina from Oklahoma.

“The DOT (North Carolina Department of Transportation) said ‘yeah, we’ll send some engineers down here and assess the situation.’

“Then the West Virginia boys came in and said, ‘We’ll have this road punched in in about three days.’ No s–t,” he recalled.

“The Army Corps of Engineers took a look and said they’d send some surveyors and engineers, the same thing the DOT said pretty much. I told them you might as well not waste your time because the West Virginia guys will have this road built before you finish your paperwork,” Lewis continued.

There's more at the link, including video and photographs.

It's a heartwarming report:  ordinary Americans getting stuck in and doing what needs to be done, regardless of bureaucratic delays, official hesitancy, and general disorganization.  We need more of it!

We see the same spirit around my home town when wildfires get too close.  The nearby towns will send fire engines, sure, but you'll also see a number of individuals - ranchers and farmers - with privately owned tractors, some fitted with dozer blades, and even a couple of fully-fledged privately owned tracked bulldozers.  When I asked one of the drivers how he happened to own a massive bulldozer, he shrugged and said that "Wildfires happen.  Iffen I want to keep my ranch, I gotta have what I need to fight them."  Apparently he bought it for a very low price at a county sale some way off, not in working order:  then he and a few fellow ranchers spent a couple of years figuring out how to restore it to operation.  They all share it during wildfire season.  (Frankly, I think they have a heck of a lot of fun driving it around and through wildfires, making firebreaks.  Boys and their massive toys!)

Anyway, well done to the "West Virginia boys".  Thanks for showing the rest of the country how it's done.

Peter