Cat’s get airlifted in for flood work

by Nick Drew | Wed 21 Oct 2015

Cat’s get airlifted in for flood work

Blog reader Daniel Lowe has highlighted some photos to us featuring an unusual way to deliver Caterpillar excavators.

Columbia in South Carolina has recently suffered some severe flooding which was caused by a once in 1000 years rain storm from the tail end of hurricane Joaquin. As a result a massive clean-up and rebuilding project has been ongoing. One of the company’s involved in this work is McClam & Associates a local contractor who has been working to restore the levee at the Columbia canal using a variety of equipment including 3 Caterpillar 308E’s like this model I tried out in Malaga last year.

The big problem for the contractors was getting much needed kit to the disaster zones, with large swathes of the state cut off by flood water getting equipment delivered by road was simply not possible, so the idea was to fly the 8 tonne class machines in under a Chinook helicopter.

The South Carolina National Guard were deployed in the Chinook to ship in the three Cat machines with the unusual mode of delivery transport even making the local news on TV and the front page of the State newspaper.

We thank Daniel for contacting the Digger Man Blog to tell us about this event and we wish a speedy clean up and rebuilding operation for all involved.

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