New Zealand isn’t the only country to have experienced some wild weather in recent times. California saw widespread flooding in the northern and central regions last week, caused by widespread snowmelt and torrential rain.
The state’s Central Valley was one of those particularly affected. It is home to countless crops ranging from almonds and walnuts to lettuce and tomatoes, making the flooding particularly damaging to local industry.
One of the most poignant stories of the floods was the case of a farmer who successfully repaired a breach in a levee on the edge of Lake Tulare in the San Joaquin Valley.
Delivered
A farmer’s Chevrolet Silverado and Ford F-150 fills a breach in an embankment on the edge of Tulare Lake in California.
With no structural elements in the embankment to anchor a potential repair to, they made the quick decision to fill a pair of pickup trucks—a Ford F-150 and a Chevrolet Silverado—with dirt and then to land in the breach.
READ MORE:
* First ride: Chevrolet Silverado 1500 ZR2 and LTZ
* American trucks are almost the same size as World War II tanks
* Chevrolet announces all-electric Silverado
* Country of Origin: Where is your new ute from?
Twitter user Cannon Michael, a quirky farmer from the Central Valley, was sent a video last week of the second ute sent into the breach by the farmer in question, and shared the video and a series of updates on the incredible repair throughout weeks on Twitter.
The video shows a farmer positioning a Silverado, putting some weight on the accelerator, putting it in gear, then diving out through the driver’s door to plop it into the broken embankment – with the farmers celebrating as the lands.
The unique solution turned out to work, at least temporarily. Michael has since shared multiple photos of the levee, showing that the farmers were able to rebuild the levee with dirt on top of the two utes.
Michael posted that the farmer in the middle of the video has no plans to file insurance claims for the likely written-off vehicles. “He is a sincere member of his community and did his best to protect his investment and local residents,” said Michael.
He added that the farmer plans to remove the trucks from the embankment once the rain stops and the flooding subsides.
Ironically, this isn’t the first time vehicles have been used to build levees in Lake Tulare. Car and Driver shared a 26-year-old Los Angeles Times report on Friday detailing how crushed cars were used to reinforce the levees of the same lake in 1969.