PORT ANGELES — Twenty-six people removed 30 tons of sand by hand from the lower level of The Landing mall in 90 minutes on Saturday morning.
The volunteers showed up to work at 8 a.m., said Doc Reiss, organizer, and had removed all vestiges of the Santa in Sand exhibit around 9:30 a.m.
“We moved four semi loads of sand and cleaned the floor and were out the door in less than two hours,” said Reiss, president-elect of the Nor’wester Rotary Club, which organized the display.
He had expected the work to take at least four hours.
The Santa in Sand exhibit opened Nov. 15, after sand sculptors Charlie Beaulieu of Kingston, Damon Langlois of Victoria and Brent Terry of Bothell created a Christmas village.
The carved houses and winter scenes lit by colored lights comprised a fundraiser for the Salvation Army. Admission to it was one can of food, and a donation box was available for cash donations.
Visitors to the exhibit donated 1,157 food items and $1,178.77 in cash to the Salvation Army, which distributed the food to those in need and will use the funds to buy more food.
The sand had to be removed by hand to prevent damage to the polished concrete floor, Reiss said.
Working with shovels and wheelbarrows, the group carried the wet sand out the mall’s back door, where Jayson Grice, working with a tractor and a scoop, loaded it into piles.
Roger Wheeler, owner of R.J. Services, will pick the sand up on Monday to store it at his shop.
The next place the sand will be seen is at Hollywood Beach this summer, during the Arts in Action sand sculpture contest, which is annually organized by Nor’wester Rotary and sponsored by Windermere Real Estate.
It’s special sand, Reiss said. It’s glacial till sand imported from Silverdale and has a high clay content, making it useful for carving.
“Some of the sand carvers say it is the best carving sand they’ve run into in the world,” Reiss said.
The sand is still fairly clean, he added, so it will be stored for use in this summer’s carving contest.
Reiss said that the volunteers included 18 Nor’wester Rotarians, one Noon Rotarian “and two kids.”
“We also had a person from the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, two of the mall owners, [Paul Cronauer and Mark Craig], Dr. Tom McCurdy, the optometrist, and Kim Weimer,” who are not affiliated with Rotary clubs, Reiss said.
“As Jayson Grice said, we couldn’t have moved this [sand] this quickly with power equipment and done it as cleanly.”
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Managing Editor/News Leah Leach can be reached at 360-417-3531 or leah.leach@peninsuladailynews.com.
