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If you live anywhere close to a major water drainage system, as I did for 28 years before selling my farm and moving to Florida, you will learn this handy/live saving trick early on in your life. The Corps of Engineers used the Kaskaskia river system as a flood control project in So IL and had the main locks and dam, controlling the flow of water during a "crisis", at the point on the river about 5 miles South of my farm. During my stay there we had 2 major floods above the dam in a matter of 3 years, floods which were classified as "once in 200 year floods" by the Army Corps. My buildings sat high enough that the flood water never reached to any of the barns or outbuildings and the house was on higher ground yet than those buildings so we were safe. But, when the water is rising in your pastures below those buildings at a rate of 8" to a foot a day during the flooding, you have no clue when it will crest of when the Army will see "fit" to open the gates and let some of the held back water flow down river! So, you take proper precautions to protect your valuables the best way you know how. And THAT was when I learned about one of the "other" uses for traffic cones.
I shudder to think about the number of evenings I went to bed with my back so jacked up from filling sandbags at some of my neighbors' farms and at the boat marina on the far side of the lake!! Luckily, where I live now you don't worry about sandbag filling, the worst that could happen is a storm surge off the Gulf of Mexico from a Hurricane like H. Michael last fall which sent an 11' wall of water onshore. That's the major reason you will see a majority of homes along the coast sitting up on 18' "stilts" of treated 12x12's sunk down to bedrock.