3.5Million Sandbags, Visualized

In the US this week, Fargo was all over the news because of their sandbag efforts to prevent floodwaters from destroying the town.  Matt Chambers was there (before he finally evacuated) and being the dutiful citizen he was, he helped.  After he left, tho, he began to wonder just how big is the 3.5 million sandbags used to prevent the flood.

That is quite the feat and the numbers don’t need visuals to make an impact. However, since I live, eat, and breath SketchUp I could not help exploring these numbers in my favorite visualization application.

According to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers an appropriately-filled sandbag measures 4 inches high by 10 inches wide by 16 inches long. The average weight is between 35 and 40 pounds.

via That’s a lot of sand. | concept3D Blog.

This story written by Randall Hand

Randall Hand is a visualization scientist working for a federal research lab, aiding researchers to discover the insights buried within their terabyte datasets generated on some of the most powerful supercomputers in the world. He also runs VizWorld.com .

Science sketchup, visualization