Not sure if you have been paying attention, as there has been so much going on, but we might be about to lose another American city to flood waters:
The rising Red River broke a 112-year-old record early Friday and was eroding a dike south of downtown, forcing authorities to issue a mandatory evacuation order covering about 150 homes.
The river had risen to 40.32 feet early Friday — more than 22 feet above flood stage and inches more than the previous high water mark of 40.10 feet set April 7, 1897. It was expected to crest at up to 43 feet on Saturday.
Just after 2 a.m. Friday, residents in one neighborhood were roused from sleep and forced to evacuate after authorities found a significant leak in a dike. Police Capt. Tod Dahle said that while water wasn’t rushing to overtake the neighborhood, the integrity of the dike was in question.
***“We do not want to give up yet. We want to go down swinging if we go down,” Fargo Mayor Dennis Walaker said Thursday, just hours after the disheartening news that forecasters had — yet again — increased the projected crest of the north-flowing Red River.
Residents in this city of 92,000 had been scrambling in subfreezing temperatures to pile sandbags along the river and spent much of Thursday preparing for a crest of 41 feet, only to have forecasters late in the day add up to 2 feet to their estimate.
I spent a couple of weeks in North Dakota, and aside from the fact that I thought the skies were too low and that it just seemed uncomfortably flat, the thing that stood out to me was how much water there was- there were lakes everywhere. I didn’t expect that. I was to the west of Fargo, at Devil’s Lake for military training, and it was probably two of the best weeks I was in the Army. Perfect weather- it was about 75-80 with blue skies every day, and there was a golf course about a mile down the road from the barracks that you could walk to and play a round for relatively cheap. Also, the locally grown beef. So good.
Here’s to hoping the folks in North Dakota pull through.
Wisdom
I’m sure Obama’s global warming talking points at the expense of suffering Dakotans will receive a warm reception there.
Certainly indicates the degree to which we should take him seriously.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@Wisdom:
Yeah, because melting ice and rising water levels have no…wait, what the fuck did you say?
Punchy
Here’s the kicker, right here. These guys aren’t baggin in shorts and wife-beaters after a July monsoon. They’re doing all this wet and sloppy work in freezing-ass temps and killer windchills.
Cannot question the strength and moxie of North Dakotians. Amazing.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Wisdom:
I think if we lose Fargo, we should impeach Obama. He knew his election kindled the wrath of the Lord; he’s had two whole months to fix our levees and reinstate prayer in school, which are the only surefire safeguards against that wrath. Instead, he gave us embryonic stem cell research.
Write to Congresswoman Bachmann, and ask her to ask someone else how to go about impeaching this guy. Before it’s to late for us all.
BrYan
I’m waiting for the inevitable comparison to the people of New Orleans by the nutjobs. Like it’s possible to pile sandbags in a Cat 3 hurricane.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@BrYan:
There’s a difference. New Orleans was destroyed because it tolerated gay people. Fargo may be destroyed because America tolerates Obama, despite his support for embryonic stem cell research and his opposition to school prayer.
kid bitzer
look, he has had two full months in which to resurrect fema from 8 years of browny-style neglect.
if he cannot undo 8 years of damage in two months, and get fema to save fargo by magic, then we should obviously impeach him.
A Mom Anon
The water is supposed to stay at 43′ til Wednesday at the earliest. Holy Crap.
It does look like there are National Guard and other agencies getting in gear to help though,and the Fargo area isn’t as heavily populated as other areas which may make evacuation easier. It looks like they’ve got alot of the sick and elderly to higher ground already as well.
One thing about something like this,people pull together to help out,and that to me is a hopeful thing.
passerby
From the linked USA article:
Ironically, Grand Forks’ devastation helped it become a safer city.
After the 1997 floods, the city [Grand Rapids] received a $400 million levee-fortification project, said Army Corps of Engineers officials, who led the project. Fargo has received only $4 million in levee work since 1997, according to the Army Corps.
"When there’s a catastrophe, everyone wants to go up there and help," said Craig Evans, an Army Corps project manager. "I’m sure that helped Grand Forks get funding for their project."
——————–
The Fargoans made a mighty sand bag effort back in 1997 thereby averting disaster, but as a result was seen as not needing dike fortification.
I dream of a day when we can be a culture that plans ahead instead of waiting for the horses to get out before closing the barn door. The Army Corps of Engineers is always doing things on the cheap and I honestly don’t know whether it’s a lack of effort on local and state politicians or the tight wads in the federal government.
[ oops, italics fail ]
Jay Severin Has A Small Pen1s
I’m sure the Republicans are using this to justify invasion of Iraq.
Cantor "See, if we didn’t take Iraq, where would we get all this sand for our sandbags?"
Dennis-SGMM
My heart goes out to those folks. The mayor of Fargo was interviewed on NPR the other day. He said the good news was that it had stopped snowing. Can’t help but wonder what will happen to homes and farms away from Fargo.
Wisdom
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: You and Barak are so smart. Your keen powers of observation are remarkable.
The flooding is because the river is blocked by ice flows, which have not melted.
Now you will tell us ice is not melting because of global warming. Perhaps you can get out one of your sandbox models and practice with it.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@kid bitzer:
Exactly. Obama is the candidate of Satan. Satan allows his henchmen to use magic. If Satan is not going to keep his promises and allow Obama to save American cities with sorcery, then we should impeach him and hold a special election in which God’s candidates are allowed to win.
If Satan cannot help us, then perhaps Jesus will. It’s as simple as that, really.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Jay Severin Has A Small Pen1s:
Plus, we can give them some of the water, averting future floods. We’ll take their sand and their oil, and give them our floodwater. It’s a win-win!
gbear
Flooding up in that area is serious business. The Red River runs thru what is the bottom of an old glacial lake. Because the river is relatively ‘new’ as far as rivers go, it hasn’t had a chance to carve a decent channel or gorge. When flooding occurs, the water tries to fill up the old lakebed. I heard on NPR last night that the river has reached widths of up to 60 miles up in Canada during severe flooding. Once the river is over the dike, there really isn’t anything to stop it.
My heart goes out to the people who’ve been working their asses off up there. In the videos I’ve seen, it looks like their standing at least ankle deep in slush and wind and snow.
Edit: Wisdom, if you’re not spoofing, quit being a dickhead.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
If only we’d cut taxes and slashed environmental regulations, this flood could have been averted.
Businessmen could have taken the excess water, filled it with deadly chemicals, and sold it to Mexico. That would have prevented the flood, AND stimulated the local economy. It would also have killed off many Mexicans, saving American jobs. In a pinch, we could have sold our water to Iran as well, getting their oil in exchange for floodwater that would kill them.
If America were run by people of sense instead of a bunch of bleeding-heart do-gooders, we could solve many of our problems at the same time.
SpotWeld
I think we’re all glad that this emgency won’t be compounded by horrendous storm damage, and that what ever flooding does occur it is as minimal as possible.
Face
I dont get this. Ice doesnt extend all the way to the bottom of the river. So why cant the water simply flow underneath the ice? Over the ice?
Impede, I get. Blocked, I dont.
Dennis-SGMM
So where’s the "They shouldn’t have built there in the first place," crowd now? Or is the GOP going to add a "Prohibit Any and All Flooding" provision to their "Road to Recovery"?
Comrade Darkness
This is Jindal’s fault for attracting G*d’s ongoing ironical holy wrath.
That money for something called "volcano monitoring" also includes equipment/meters to track streams.
Punchy
Really dumb question — if you’re floating across a border on a river, how do the Feds stop you and ask for visas? Do they run out some party barge with a Mercury 300 outboard to race down all the tubers, Basstrackers, and jet skis? Is there a "gate" across the river?
I’m serious. Never thought about this before.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@Wisdom:
Ehud Barak? Once again, what the fuck did you say?
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Dennis-SGMM:
I’m busy trying to figure out how to tie this flood in to bringing back the gold standard.
Maybe if we bring that back, we can then take all of our worthless paper money, and buttress the levees with it.
Brian J
This seems like a good opportunity to bring up something that’s always bothered me. During a lot of disasters like this, we hear people who say they realized that they couldn’t rely on government and felt that, finally, they knew they had to look out for themselves, or some variation of that. To a large extent, that’s true. But a sentiment like that also obscures the biggest failures of what happened after a disaster like Hurricane Katrina: the failure of government to do what only it is able to do.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Comrade Darkness:
Really? I didn’t know that. Do you have a link?
John S.
Because talking about the problem is hurting people in North Dakota. I think this indicates the degree to which we should take YOU seriously.
BTW, that’s a trollerific handle!
NonyNony
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
Don’t bother engaging with him. His comment is the equivalent of "if there’s Global Warming why is it so cold out, huh, smart guy?" which isn’t even an argument. Showing that he’s internalized talking points without actually reading even the simple articles about the science written for lay readers (which, incidentally, predicts that global climate change will lead to more extreme weather patterns in general, not that it will consistently lead to overall warmer weather everywhere – at least in the short term).
My heart goes out to the folks in North Dakota – we’ve been having massive flooding up where some of my family lives in Northwest Ohio for the last few years and it is no joking matter – and it sound like the Red River floods are much, much worse.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Brian J:
The even funnier thing is, those are the same people who laughed at Sean Penn for bringing a boat in to NOLA to save people. He did exactly what they say he should’ve done, but he’s a useless Hollywood liberal, so ha ha!
Dennis-SGMM
@Face:
Ice floes piling up under pressure can form a pretty effective dam. Yes, some water does get around them but when you have the kind of volume that the Red River is at now anything that impedes the flow causes a substantial rise in the river.
Comrade Darkness
@Face: Impeded is sufficient to cause flooding because once it’s impeded, like a colander, it catches more debris and gets blocked completely. The reason there is both significant ice AND significant water flow is they had a late heavy snow and then spring weather heated up too fast this year. A slow warming doesn’t do this.
vacuumslayer
I’m an Air Force wife…never heard a bad word about Minot.
toujoursdan
I know that Winnipeg has a series of dikes and flood channels that divert the river around the city and keep it from being flooded out, but given the last huge flood in 1997 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Red_River_Flood ) you’d think there would be something done on the American side of the river to prevent Fargo, Moorhead and Grand Forks from being flooded again.
I hope some of the infrastructure money is going there.
passerby
@Wisdom:
Thanks for the link. And from that article:
They said that dredging will allow for quicker breakup of ice in the spring and reduce the threat of sudden ice jams.
Every spring communities that live along rivers that carry the the thaw have to deal with rising waters. In this case, dredging would relieve the threat of flooding and is considerably cheaper. But that river hadn’t been dredged in over 12 years–probably wasn’t in their budget.
Seems like the insurance companies would save money by chipping to help communities with maintenance projects like this instead of paying huge numbers of flood insurance policies. Guess they need that money for sponsoring football arenas and other professional sports activities.
John S.
See, that proves it was pork!
What do volcanoes have to do with streams? Sheesh.
NonyNony
@Face:
Actually, in that article that Wisdom linked to, they say why it’s a problem – the river hasn’t been dredged so there’s junk in it that actually does allow the ice to extend all the way down to the bottom of the river and block the flow entirely. Which is why the ice build-up is such a problem.
kit
oh, I dont’ know…seems to me when the weather is in the single digits and you are fighting water, being evacuated by boats at 2am, and don’t know whether you’ll be able to come back to home and livlihood…pointing fingers and blame is the last darn thing on your mind….we leave that for the people that sit around and complain that Obama is to blame for everything, or the war or whatever the latest issue is…naw, sometimes it’s time to put your money where your mouth is , roll up your sleeves and get to work..y’all have a nice day…kit in Bugtussle, ND
Comrade Darkness
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss:
link to the text of the bill
"Stream gages"
@John S.: I assume you are being snarky, but realtime water data is one of their tasks
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Comrade Darkness:
Thanks! I was too lazy to look that up.
Ed in NJ
Why do people like (no)Wisdom continue to misuse the term "global warming" when anyone serious about the issue knows it is climate change, not just warming, that is the issue.
I suspect it is because they can’t really rely on the science, and instead need to advance their anti-science agenda by filling up the world’s message boards with snarky comments every time there is a story involving extreme cold or icy conditions.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@NonyNony:
It’s like they have a political governor on their brain that limits their ability to think.
John S.
I know Balloon Juice can throw off one’s Snark-Detector calibration, but yes, I was being completely facetious.
passerby
@Brian J:
Unfortunately, this applies to disaster relief. Government is too bogged down in bureacracy to respond as quickly as individual folk.
Government should provide proper infrastructure, like levees and dikes, designed to prevent disasters–but that only happens in Holland.
BTW, if I were a man, I’d be Sean Penn.
MNPundit
I’m from Fargo-Moorhead and my fiance and immediate family is there. Also the cat who I hate. I swear to god if the levies broke I would find him wearing water wings and standing at my door at 5am the next morning meowing his empty fucking head off and demanding feet to rub.
It is also the home of Cheney interviewer Scott Hennan (who I am told is actually a very nice person, his right-wing hackery is strictly for ratings which is distasteful in its own right) and his radio station program "The Flag."
I will say one thing: You will never ever EVER get a North Dakotan to plan ahead, that might require an increase in property taxes. Personally I think they should just make Second Street a dike but what the fuck do I know? My high school (Oak Grove) was only destroyed in 97…
Number of people in the immediate area (and I mean immediate, the cities are meshed together so only the signs tell you where you are):
Dilworth 3000
Fargo 92000
Moorhead 35000
West Fargo 23000
gnomedad
@Comrade Darkness:
You are depleting the Strategic Ignorant Ridicule Reserve, you Commie!
Paul L.
@kid bitzer:
So the progressive narrative was that FEMA was incompetently managed under Bush and Obama superior management skills would correct that.
Actually according to Spike Lee the Federal government blew up the levees so that they would flood the poor black districts in New Orleans
Comrade Darkness
@passerby:
Bureaucracy is exactly what you need. You just have to use it right. Only the government has many arms into every area to coordinate everything that needs to be done, all at once. Access to redirecting roads all one-way, for example. Directing the national guard to set up emergency power so when all those trucks you have standing buy with supplies arrive they can unload into a refrigerated tent. Etc. Etc. Etc. That’s all bureaucracy. It’s not all bad. Yeah, it has it’s limits, but it also is the only way we’ve found of getting more than a handful of people coordinated to accomplish anything.
The Other Steve
The problem that Fargo has, is that the Red River flows north.
So as it warms up in the south, the snow melts, and then it starts flowing north where it meets ice that hasn’t melted yet… and ice slows down the flow. So then it backs up, and hence it floods.
On top of that, the land is flat, and there really isn’t much of a river valley so when it floods it spreads wide. It’s a young river they say, only maybe 9,000 years old(I guess since the last ice age) so it hasn’t really carved itself a good channel.
Fargo floods about every 25 years or so. The last flood was only 12 years ago. We had a particularly hard snowfall this year, which is contributing to all the runoff.
Phoenix Woman
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
As a resident of Minnesota, albeit on the other side of the state from the Red River: THANK YOU!
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Paul L.:
Spike Lee is a Commie. Real Americans know that NOLA was destroyed because of gay people.
Dork
Where do I begin?
"Must save this town! We need Moorhead!"
"Donate! Give up more money for Moorhead!"
"We cannot survive this without Moorhead!"
LD50
Wisdom:
"Her her. Barack says they’res global warming but it’s snowing. Her her. Stupid libs. Al Gore is fat."
The Other Steve
I want to highlight that… The reason the Red River is flooding is due to the record snowfall we had this year up north. North Dakota in particular. They were predicting that there would be flooding back in December.
The last several years the snowfall has gone south for some reason… mostly hitting down in Iowa. (Iowa had flooding last year)
Fern
@Face:
Because the ice breaks up into chunks and the chunks of ice back up behind obstructions like bridges or sharp turns in the river bed.
passerby
@Comrade Darkness:
Understood and agreed Comrade. But locals can mobilized much more quickly than the National Guard, say, in sandbag efforts. Many river municipalities are in possession of a sand bagger and can call out a "bucket brigade" in emergencies.
And I think this is how it should be. Anyone who has lived thru a flood threat, or any disaster for that matter, understands the energy behind the espirit de corps that drives action and cooperation among members of a community.
So yeah. There is a usefulness to having a well coordinated response. The closer to home (local/state), the better.
Fern
@toujoursdan:
Yup, that has saved our asses on any number of occasions. We just finished having the floodway enlarged this year, and it looks like it was just in time.
passerby
@The Other Steve:
An interesting and important detail.
The Moar You Know
YOUR MAGICAL UNITY PONY SHOULD HAVE EASILY BEEN ABLE TO FIX FEMA IN TWO WEEKS NEVER MIND TWO MONTHS WITH ALL THE STUFF YOU LIBTARDS WERE SAYIN ABOUT HIM I THOUGHT HE COULD WAVE HIS MAGIC WAND AND AMERICA WOULD BE BETTER WHY IS THERE STILL SNOW IF THERES GLOBAL WARMING IT AINT WARM IN NORTH DAKOTA HAHA GOT YOU LIBTARDS ON THAT ONE INSTEAD THE STOCK MARKET FALLS EVERY TIME HE OPENS HIS COMMUNIST MOUTH AND HE WILL SOCIALIZE EVERYTHING AND MCCAIN WOULD HAVE BEEN SO MUCH BETTER CAUSE HE WASS A POW WAR HERO AND I GET STARBURST EVERY TIME I SEE PALIN IN THOSE SHOES
ALSO BLACK PEOPLE SUCK AND AL GORE IS FAT
There you go, Wisdom and Paul L. I did all the work for you, you can go back to eating cheetos now.
Comrade Darkness
@passerby: Yes, the locals are far more motivated and on the scene faster (obviously), but they might lack access to heavy equipment and other tools that are far more economically owned at the state or regional level. So even there it is harder to go it alone.
There are two parts to this, the general and the immediate. It seems that this river is always only ever dealt with reactively. Rather than having the problem proactively negated, which would require authority to change the landscape that is outside the purview of the local municipalities. If that’s what people prefer because the investment is too much then that’s fine. But without looking beyond the local, this is just going to repeat itself forever.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
DEATH? Is that you?
kit
FYI – North Dakota is just flat out wierd, and I’m saying that as a permanent resident…on Tuesday, the Interstate(I-94) was closed in the eastern part of the state due to flooding..in the west, it was closed due to blizzarding….now we saved the city where I’m from due to preplanning and a major effort on the part of the citizens…but there is still damage. and after the river crested here…we sent our volunteers to Fargo to help out.
We had dykes in place and we built them up as well…but with the snow and ice jams up north…it’s anyone’s guess how high the second crest will be….yes, this is just the first one…and it will be at least 3-5 days or a week before Grand Forks gets hit. We expect our second crest sometime in April…and it could be higher than the first one.
The govenor has had a demolition team come in to blow some of the ice jams up…so the water will continue to move.
When families have lived here for a hundred years or more…multi-generations, it’s easy to forget this is basically built on one big swamp, it seems like this is a pretty safe and solid area…when in fact, the water will reclaim the land under certain conditions.
href="http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Agassiz">
Comrade Darkness
@Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse: LOL!
On that grinning note. I HAVE TO GET TO WORK.
MNPundit
@Dork: Slow your roll buddy.
There is a town in Kentucky called Morehead.
Punchy
KC about to get hammared as well. 8-12 inches of snow. May not sound like much to y’all Dakoterians and Minnys, but that’s about 7-11 more inches than necessary to put these fuckers into a MAJOR panic attack.
Mix in icy sleet first, then snow, then 25 mph winds to stir it all up……plus my ‘rents in town…..and I have one friggin disaster of a ‘kend ahead of me.
Evinfuilt
I feel really bad, this is another example of what happens when we delay spending money on infrastructure. This time its dredging and repairing of dikes. All of that pushed off because its not "fun spending" and tax cuts would be better. I feel bad, I used to believe tax cuts made things all better (and thats as someone who went to college to be a Geophysicst, I should have known better… no one pays out of their own goodwill to save a town from nature.)
someguy
Basically, the lack of response is still Bush’s fault. It’s his legacy. I feel sorry for the people there; it seems Bush hates white people too.
kay
@Wisdom:
Just so you know, Obama met with the two North Dakota Senators and a Minnesota House member on Wednesday, for the flood briefing. I checked.
I can’t monitor the man constantly. I don’t know what he’s up to today.
MNPundit
@kay: I saw the picture. Conrad, Dorgon, Pomeroy (who likes High Fives), Klobuchar and the Minnesota House member only seen from the back was my House member, Colin "Right Wing Blue Dog" Peterson.
@Punchy: Damn right t doesn’t mean much, that’s what FM got this weekend while they were sandbagging in the middle of a flood.
Of course they are going to mock you red necks mercilessly. You betcha!
passerby
@someguy:
Your comment pretty much sums it up.
But:
I’m not quite sure who you mean by "y’all".
kay
@MNPundit:
Every disaster response for the rest of our lives is going to be compared to Katrina. I accept that. It’s like "gate" for scandal, right?
vacuumslayer
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss:
Is there nothing teh gays can’t destroy?
bago
*too banal and egocentric to type*
Shit Jesus. Not again. One would think we would have procedures for this by now. Procedures slightly above "trust your life to a bunch of sandbags and pray".
bootlegger
@MNPundit: There’s a college in Kentucky called Morehead.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@vacuumslayer:
Other than God Himself, nothing comes to mind.
bago
@Comrade Darkness: Ironic comment. Bureaucracy was first invented by Egyptians dealing with floods. They wrote that shiz down and then were proclaimed to be gods when the floods happened again. Next Year. Almost to the day. Make a calendar and rule the world. It’s worked so far those twits working on Outlook.
CT
Speaking of Devils Lake, my mom’s folks are from that area, and the rise of the lake level over the last 15 years or so has been a huge problem-its risen over 25 feet since 1993, flooding something like 100,000 acres of farmland. Its a slow motion disaster. A lot of roads are now at the bottom of the lake, and they have to keep building up the roadbeds of the major highways to keep them above water. I was out there a few years ago and it feels like your driving to Key West or something. Another 10 feet of rise and all the extra water is going to start draining into… you guessed it, the Red River.
Hedley Lamarr
Is it so flat up there that folks can’t move to higher ground?
Grumpy Code Monkey
Wisdom — you need to try harder. As spoofs go, you currently rate a 3 out of 10.
Either that, or learn the difference between a local minimum and a global average.
Phoenix Woman
@Hedley Lamarr: Unfortunately, yes. This land was the the site of Glacial Lake Agassiz. The occasional flooding helps to make the land fertile — or did, back before industrial-age chemicals were part of the flood mix.
The land gradually slopes down as one goes north, about a foot a mile — not enough to allow the cutting of nice deep river channels: http://www.startribune.com/local/41795147.html
Mike in NC
The usual suspects will tell you he’s calibrating the teleprompter, or perhaps editing the birth certificate.
Michael D.
Barack Obama Hates White People!
Dennis-SGMM
A real President would have already flown over Fargo at an altitude of 25,000 feet.
KRK
@MNPundit:
I can’t help but think that it’d be at least somewhat helpful for the folks in the Red River Valley if Minnesota had a second Senator in the mix. Why oh why can’t Al Franken see that by pursuing his electoral victory and trying to actually get seated as a Senator he is hurting Minnesota? Norm would be all over that flood if Al would just get over his greater number of votes and withdraw.
MNPundit
@bootlegger: Which I linked to here.
Jay
I’ve lived in ND for a fair share of my life, including 5 years in Grand Forks (I was a freshman at UND during the 1997 flood that took the entire city). I sandbagged during a blizzard then and my sister , who lives in Fargo right now and was forced to leave her ground level apartment following the discovery of the leak in the downtown dike earlier yesterday, sandbagged in sub-zero temps a couple days ago.
Following the 1997 flood, GF was able to create a substantial diversion project and floodwall, which is intended to protect the city from crests like this. However, Fargo (as was stated above) wasn’t able to do this due to the paltry sum of money given to it by the US government. Therefore, no precautions were taken, and it was left vulnerable creating the situation they’re facing right now.
Ice jams are indeed a significant problem further north in the diversion. First of all, it’s not just a couple sheets dicking things up. These jams are HUGE. I saw an arial fly-over two days ago of one on the Missouri and it took a couple minutes to show the whole thing. They DO create significant problems because, as was noted above, even a slight slow-down in flow creates rising water levels…and even inches upstream can be a disaster. The guard has been dropping C4 to break them up.
The problem though, more than anything, is that the entire Red River Valley is an old glacial lake bed. It rises and falls mere inches from end to end. When that much water spills out on the flat land, it spreads for miles. It doesn’t MOVE very fast, but it gets everywhere.
If you want a spiritual answer, Fred Phelps has declared that the flooding was God’s answer to North Dakotans who "flipped off God and raised your hands against His anointed by criminalizing WBC’s gospel preaching against gays and their supporters". Which is totally obvious.
In all seriousness though, keep my fellow citizens in your minds. They are genuinely good, hard working people who are fighting their asses off against some really tough conditions. I’d go and help but unfortunately it isn’t safe to travel on the interstates considering we just got 24" of snow on Tuesday and Wednesday here.
Jay in Dickinson, ND.
gbear
@KRK:
Norm has his own personal flood to deal with this morning.
Bwahahahah!
Jager
I grew up in Grand Forks, the Lincoln Drive nieghborhood where we lived is gone! After the ’97 flood; the homes, the school and half the golf course were demolished and turned into a huge park. When I was in high school my friends and I were turned into sandbagging machines more than once. Everybody works their asses off and fights like hell for days on end…it sucks overall but the community effort feels pretty damn good when its all over!
My sisters live in Bismarck and it looks like they ducked the Missouri River’s bullets. They got the first snowstorm in western ND on November 3rd and that snow is still on the ground…they’ve had a tough winter.
My sisters always worry about our earthquakes and wild fires here in SoCal…I get to return the favor this year.
Zuzu's Petals
@kid bitzer:
Well, not to be too linear, but FEMA’s job isn’t prevention generally.
But it looks like they’re doing a pretty good job with response in ND.
J. Michael Neal
If you take a bowling ball, and let it go in Fargo, there’s nothing that’s going to stop it rolling all the way to Winnipeg.
J. Michael Neal
Not to distract from the flood, or anything, but I’m really hoping you guys lose to New Hampshire tomorrow. If I have to sit through another performance at the Frozen Four like the last two the Fucking Sioux have put me through, I’m going to jump into the Potomac. At least there’s no chance that you’ll be losing to Boston College this time.
BP in MN
But it will roll slowly. Very, very slowly.
Jay
Snap! Them’s fighting words. Way to give the 12 seed home ice BTW. How the fuck does that work?
passerby
As a slightly OT observation, in the months after Katrina when New Orleans was entertaining a variety of redevelopment plans, the Grand Forks model was being held up as a successful example. Their decision for a more permanent fix required dikes to be built which meant relocation for a number residents and businesses, eminent domain and all that.
From the 1998 article:
"While a greenway will be constructed and shared by the Forks, Stauss says his city can ill afford to lose 500 residential and more than 20 business tax-paying properties that will be claimed by the dike. And in Grand Forks, an additional 195 homes along the planned dike will need to be moved or demolished.
"Nonetheless, as part of its downtown plan, Grand Forks has designed dual-purpose space on the dike’s greenway that will provide recreation and festival space, with an amphitheater and lighting system that can withstand flooding. The ultimate suggestion, though—to turn lemons into lemonade…"
A New Orleans radio station tracked down the the GF politician responsible back in 1998 for making the tough call to rezone the flood area (the area was repeatedly flooded during previous river toppings). IIRC, he spoke about how politically unpopular his decision was and how he was voted out of office in the next election but nowyears later
his actions are being appreciated as visionary and wise.
Here we see where it is possible to protect a city even though some will have to sacrifice in the short term. The common sense this city official exercised hurt him politically but today, Grand Forks is not flooding—and neither are the homes and businesses that used to be located on the (now) greenway.
Good for them someone they elected fell on his own sword to make this happen.
J. Michael Neal
The only way that the NCAA can get anyone to bid to host a regional is if they guarantee that a host school will get to play at home. Don’t complain too loudly, because two years ago, it was North Dakota benefiting from the same rule, with higher seeded Gophers and Michigan having to play them in Mobbed Up Nazi Arena.
leinie
I’ve been asking that question for a week. GO SIOUX.
Raised in Grand Forks, left before the flood of 97 but was there about a month after it, and the devastation of my home town made me sob.
To have this happening while it is still essentially winter – blizzards and snow and trust me, it gets COLD there, is horrible.
Good luck Fargo, and Grand Forks, and all the little towns in between.
J. Michael Neal
Yeah. The lack of memory on the part of North Dakota fans doesn’t surprise me.
Linkmeister
@Phoenix Woman: Thanks for that link. It’s very helpful in explaining what’s going on as well as the repetitive nature of these events.
One solution would seem to be dredging; another, larger solution might be (don’t laugh) spending some infrastructure stimulus money on terraforming the land around the river to build a gorge. I’m talking Hoover Dam-sized project here.
Jay
I guess that’s true. Although don’t lie, leather seats feel good.
BAK
Yes, Fargo and Bismarck might be the story for the national and local news, but remember all of the small communities around the area. Many people are stranded in their farmsteads or small communities, and the only way that they can get out is with boats or special equipment that the government has.
Here in Jamestown, we get the joy of knowing that the Army Corps of Engineers are going to open the Pipestem and Jamestown reservoirs in the next couple of weeks to join in the flooding that is going on here in town. That is to try and relieve the flooding up north of us. The other bad thing of releasing the water from the reservoirs is that it allows flooding in South Dakota.
kit
@passerby…
it might be noted that Grand Forks isn’t flooding …yet.
for their sakes I hope it doesn’t….but these issues are far from over…..the river flows North and there are still ice jams that haven’t broken up yet….there may be overland flooding coming from the west feeding into the Red….
passerby
@kit:
Wow, what a mess. And the thought of all that water along with the freezing temperatures, good god.
From someone’s comment up-thread, at least the Guard is engaged, taking measures to avert a worse situation or at least manage the catastrophe.
My heart goes out to the region.
passerby
Oh, and get a load of this:
FARGO, N.D. (AP) – A CNN journalist and seven other people have been arrested for standing on top of sandbag levees in the Fargo area.
Fargo Police Sgt. Ross Renner didn’t have many details of the journalist’s arrest, but said the man appeared to be taking pictures at the time.
He says officers made the arrests Wednesday and Thursday after seeing people climb up on the dikes. Renner says police will arrest anyone they see on top of a dike out of concern for people’s safety and the integrity of the levees. He says it’s likely all those arrested have been released.
A CNN spokeswoman said she had no immediate information about the arrest.
Is it unreasonable to expect that people should understand why it’s a no-no to climb on homemade sandbag levees? Like the Fargo police don’t have enough to do.
TenguPhule
Yes.
SATSQ.
Especially when it comes to the media.
someguy
Too bad the feds haven’t responded. I guess they’re waiting for tales of evacuated crowds packing the Fargo Dome and standing knee deep in their own poop before they decide to do anything. I’m sure Obama has ordered a massive response, but damn, he inherited a (intentionally) busted government. I guess the Republicans were right when they said government doesn’t work. Too bad they left out the other part of their comment, "because we made it that way."
Gaffa
In response to #43:
Scott Hennan? You misheard. The man’s show is no act (or, perhaps more accurately, his life is an act and his show is the punchline). He’s a Cheney-style Republican through-and-through; he’s styled his career after Rush Limbaugh and would love nothing more to be him, as oogie as that might sound to sentient lifeforms.
In the previous Nodak flood of 97, I was working radio tech for the last standing radio station in Grand Forks County, a public radio station. We were busting our chops trying to keep our one under-funded public radio station on the air to keep news flow in to the Valley. Hennen, back then with KCNN (a local news station), was off the air, as their towers fried out when flood waters hit them. Our tower? It was almost twelve feet underwater, and kept dry only because of an insane amount of volunteer effort who bailed water out 24/7 from a hastily-erected sandbag wall in the middle of the freezing ice-water flood.
Their management made a deal with our management to add KCNN’s news team to ours. Whatever, we’re all in this together, right? (We had already teamed up in a way with WDAZ television). Hennan came in, trashed our station, trashed-talked us (we’re all "amateurs" who didn’t deserve to work with him), took over our airwaves, refused to even give out the minimum amount of recognition we asked for us burning out our transmitters to keep Hennan on the air (which was to say "KCNN broadcasting with the help of KFJM"), and eventually just left our building and broadcasted — through our towers — from his mobile RV home with his portable bar and broadcast unit in it (we still had to run food to him, of course).
Me? I was taken off of tech duty to answer phones — for Scott Hennan. Because he was expecting a lot of people to call him up and ask him about the most important story of the flood — how Scott Hennan was dealing with the flood.
In the end, we burnt out our towers keeping KCNN and Scott Hennan on the air as long as we could, and they never paid us a penny for our efforts or our equipment.
passerby
@TenguPhule:
As I was making the comment, I re-edited it several times, but my original inclination was to refer to them as asshats. I don’t know why I ended up cutting them any slack, especially since they work for that shameless whore CNN.
@someguy:
Where are people being evacuated to? Someone up-thread noted that there is no higher ground in Fargo.
Dennis-SGMM
Just heard someone from Fargo on NPR. It’s so cold there that the sandbags are freezing solid so the result is like trying to stack frozen turkeys. Damn.
kit
Ok -there are contingency plans in place — 4 Red Cross shelters …and The Humane Society is urging everyone to drop off their animals with them…because they aren’t allowed in the shelters..should the need to evacuate arise.
Today the LTC (long term care) facilities have been evacuating their residents to other facilites around the tri-state area, along with caregivers to take care of them, anyone who had room and the ability to care for the residents at their skill level.
The Red River is expected to crest tomorrow at 42-43 ft. in Fargo.
And it’s expected to crest in Grand Forks on Wednesday at 52 ft….but that could change between then and now.
Dennis-SGMM
Okay, someone help me out. What’s the basis of the measurement of the height of a river in flood? Is it the height from the bottom of the river, the height above the banks of the river or…?
Nellcote
Why can’t they cluster bomb the ice jams?
MNPundit
@Nellcote: Not enough penetration. The ice flows go very deep.
Nellcote
Bunker busters then?
Seems like there should be a good use for DOD stuff besides killing people.
reality-based
Passerby –
well, speaking from the (relative) heights of Park River, North Dakota (population around 1200)
– I’m here visiting my Mom, we’re about 35 miles west of the Red River, and about 40 feet higher –
a lot of the frail elderly and disabled people from Fargo are finding refuge in smaller communities. Park River’s Nursing Home took in 12 nursing home residents from Fargo, and the Grafton State School (for special needs and mentally challenged) took in a lot of residents of Fargo Group homes.
And Grafton has been having some flood problems of its own –
My sister and family are in Moorhead – so far, so good, the drains are plugged in the basement of their house, they don’t need to sandbag, they are volunteering every day filling sandbags for others – but she says that exhaustion is going to be key – many homeowners and city officials already haven’t slept in days, and the crest is forecast to last a week.
National Guard from NoDak, Minnesota, and South Dakota are already in the city – and it’s heartening to read that they’re sending 15 Regular Army Helicopters, with personnel, as well –
You cannot believe how miserable the weather has been here – I sandbagged in a blizzard in Grand Forks in the spring of 79, it’s painful to watch other people doing it now in Fargo –
all that said – as John mentioned, NoDakers are just WAY cool.
bob h
I hope FEMA does not embarrass itself here.
Glocksman
Damn.
The last large flood here in Evansville was a bit before my time, but I remember my grandparents talking about it.
A band that’s been my favorite for years did a song called ‘We Walk The Levee’ about midwestern (they’re from Kansas) floods.
In the ’51 flood the river got mean
The levee broke at a town downstream
Up on our levee where the county lines meet
Caught a couple of their boys with some TNT
Something had to give and it gave down there
My thoughts are with you but my family’s here
It was you this time it was us before
Nothing’s fair in flood and war
And blood’s thicker than water
But thin and cold in the flood
The mud and the guilt and the gun get heavy
We do what we gotta
We walk the levee
My sisters married brothers from the neighboring town
My cousin and his boy farm his father’s ground
I’m a Christian man with a bible and a gun
Just praying to God ain’t gotta shoot no one
Frankly, I’m glad George Bush is fucking gone this time around.
passerby
Reportedly the Red River crested sometime today Sat 28 March. Here’s hoping. With Obama in office, I hope he can light a fire under the Army Corpse of Engineers and get something done to resolve Fargo’s (and Moorehead’s) annual sandbag festival.
@Glocksman:
In the ‘51 flood the river got mean
The levee broke at a town downstream
Up on our levee where the county lines meet
Caught a couple of their boys with some TNT
Something had to give and it gave down there
My thoughts are with you but my family’s here
It was you this time it was us before
Nothing’s fair in flood and war
Where did you find this old song?
That was a neat interactive map attached to the Evansville flood of 1937 story. The pictures were reminiscent of NO after Katrina. Does Evansville sweat the Spring Thaw every year?.
The Miss. River levees btwn NO and Baton Rouge are well maintained and pretty stout, the river has a good dredge regularly to maintain a channel deep enough for open-sea vessels at NO. Nevertheless, they keep a good eye on the spring thaw down there every year.