HOLD THE LEVEE

Synopsis

Roy Tessendorf is a volunteer fire captain. He has nineteen people, four trucks, and a town of eight hundred sitting behind an earth levee that the Corps of Engineers has just described, in writing, as indefensible. The equipment goes eleven miles downriver, to a town of four thousand. That is the correct decision and Roy does not argue with it. He drives home, parks, and starts making a list of everyone who owns a truck. The crest is nine days out. The wall needs two more feet along four miles. Nobody in the county is coming, the sand has to be bought, and the first question at the firehouse meeting is who is going to tell people to stay.

Who this is about

Roy Tessendorf runs a volunteer fire company of nineteen people in a Missouri river town of eight hundred, and has never in his life organized anything larger than a pancake breakfast.

What goes wrong

In July 1993 the Corps of Engineers reclassifies the levee as indefensible and moves its equipment eleven miles downriver to a town with four thousand people in it.

What's at stake

Eight hundred people, six hundred thousand sandbags, and a wall of packed earth that has to gain two feet before a crest that is nine days out.

Why it keeps going

Each episode is another day of the wall, another argument with a county that wants them gone, and another family deciding whether to stay and fill bags.

Takeaway

A town is not a place, it is the number of people who refuse to leave it.

Shelves

Themes

Story, in the creator's words

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Style

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Characters

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Tech stack

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Schedule

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Production plan

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