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A flood fight is a very labor intensive operation. Hundreds or even thousands of volunteers will be needed to lay sandbags, construct expedient flood works, and provide support services. A good workforce is one of your most critical resource needs during a flood emergency. Notes It is best to recruit and train volunteers through a systematic process. Plans to address workforce needs can greatly reduce or eliminate wasted efforts and prevent time delays. The rapid mobilization of a trained workforce is essential in a flood fight. The flood emergency plan should make personnel estimates for various flood fighting options. While such estimates are often "field modified" they provide a good starting point for recruitment programs. It is important to keep your volunteer demand and availability in line. Having too many volunteers can be as detrimental to the operation as not having enough. Your first volunteer recruitment effort should be directed toward the use of existing organized labo,r pools. Schools and community organizations that have basic organizational structures are good starting points. By using existing groups and labor pools, organizational problems are reduced and recruitment efforts can be targeted towards specific workforce goals and skill requirements. High school and college students have toiled to save many river towns throughout the United States. As a group, students are very capable of performing heavy labor, such as filling and lifting sandbags. Past events have shown the student workforce to be highly motivated and willing to work long hours. Furthermore, students are used to working in organized groups and have a generalwilli gness 0 accep an 0 ow lfec ons. Another potential source of organized labor is to use prison trustees or day labor from work release programs. Although security issues can be raised when using this labor pool, the workers from this sector have proven to be very valuable assets during flood fight operations. It may be possible to begin the volunteer recruitment before the crisis phase of the flood emergency. As part of the alert phase, some communities seek the assistance of school districts and systems to recruit and train student volunteers. The trained volunteers are organized into work groups using existing school patterns such as home room assignments, class assignments, or similar organizational structures. On college campuses, the organizational structure can include fraternities, sororities, and Page6-3