400 Sand Springs volunteers turn out for Community Service Day at Case Park

Nearly 400 volunteers showed up to a work day at Case Community Park Saturday morning to help clean up the 100-acre park after it spent more than a week submerged by the flooded Arkansas River.

Photos courtesy of HillSpring Church.

Waters reached depths of 4-8 feet in some areas and the park remains closed for the foreseeable future.

The swift Arkansas current eroded the soil around the base of numerous trees. Some trees were knocked over and had to be removed, while others had to be righted, staked, and filled in with dirt.

Dead tree limbs, leaves, trash, and other detritus littered the grounds of the baseball, softball, soccer, and disc golf fields. All the chain link fencing throughout the park was packed with detritus that had to be removed. In many areas the current bent the fencing beyond repair and it had to be removed. Every bit of pavement in the park is under an inch of silt that had to be pressure washed.

The softball, baseball, and soccer concession stands and restroom buildings were all heavily flooded, resulting in a complete loss of almost everything inside. The buildings had to be mucked out and scrubbed. Containers had to be cleared out and several roll-off dumpsters were filled to the brim throughout the park. The entire fenced-in port-o-potty enclosure had to be demolished.

Playground turf had to be removed throughout the park. Metal art pieces throughout the park had to be pressure washed. Multiple low spots throughout the park had to be filled in due to washout. The volleyball court had to be refilled with sand after most of it washed away.

The Parks Department split the volunteers into several teams based on physical capabilities and project difficulty. Joy Turner, Kevin Rouk, Tristan Hudson, Shawn Cole, Gene Hartman, Joe Medlin, Ashlie Pope, Tom Potocnik, Kim Fisher, Grant Gerondale, and Jeff Edwards were the various team leaders.