Watch: Farmer sacrifices two utes to prevent orchard from flooding

New Zealand isn’t the only country that’s been battling wild weather in recent times. California saw widespread flooding across its Northern and Central regions last week, caused by widespread snowmelt and torrential rain.

The state’s Central Valley was amongst those particularly affected. It is home to countless crops, ranging from almonds and walnuts to lettuce and tomatoes, making the floods especially damaging to local industry.

One of the most harrowing tales of the floods was the case of a farmer who successfully repaired a breach in a levee on the edge of the Tulare Lake in San Joaquin Valley.

With no structural elements in the levee to anchor a potential repair to, they made the quick decision to fill a pair of pick-ups – a Ford F-150 and Chevrolet Silverado – with dirt, and then land them in the breach.

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Twitter user Cannon Michael, a separate farmer from the Central Valley, was sent video of the second ute being sent into the breach by the farmer in question last week, sharing the video and a series of updates on the incredible repair on Twitter throughout the week.

The video shows one farmer positioning a Silverado, putting a weight of some kind on the throttle pedal, slotting it into gear, and then ducking out of the driver’s side door to allow it to flop into the broken levee – with celebrations amongst the farmers when it lands.

The unique solution proved to work, at least temporarily. Michael has shared multiple images of the levee since, showing that the farmers were able to rebuild the levee with dirt packed on top of the two utes.

Michael has posted that the farmer at the centre of the video doesn’t plan to file any insurance claims over the likely written off vehicles. “He is an upstanding member of his community and was doing his best to protect his investment and local residents,” Michael said.

He added that the farmer plans to get the trucks out of the levee once the rain stops and the flooding recedes.

Ironically, it isn’t the first time that vehicles have been used to create levees in the Tulare Lake. Car and Driver shared a 26-year-old report from the Los Angeles Times on Friday detailing how crushed cars were used to reinforce the same lake’s levees back in 1969.