Red River Flood Fight 2009 *pics added almost daily*

[Paul]

well Cliffy if you need a ride along with a camera let me know, i am sure you could get me plenty close, as for know I am pumping water out of my yard and basement. Need some break so thought I would hit the keyboard a while.

[Paul]

River at 31' now 9 more feet to go. I have been in Fargo/Moorhead since 1991, and I have never seen them sandbag the jail (across the street from my house) and have never seen downtown buisness sandbagged in Fargo. The Phone company, the Newspaper, Gas stations, all have small dikes around them.

Just a note, there is no editing done on any of these photos. Just straight from camera. Just raw conversion and size adjustment.

Flood made this guy homeless:

[Dbl]

It looks like Northern Improvement is busy! I am guessing they are helping with dike construction?

[Paul]

It is not only Norhtern Improvment but every dumptruck withing a 100 mile radius. there are even trucks here from MPLS/St Paul, and Souix Falls. No Garbage pickup going on because the Sanitation people are driving dump trucks instead. 24 hours a day. River is now coming up a few inches per hour. Whapeton had a levy breach last night but managed to repair it to save downtown.

[cliffy]

Great pics Paul...keep'em coming...

[Cecil]

Heading out there tomorrow at 5am to help out!

[DonBo]

Heading out there tomorrow at 5am to help out!

Good for you, the best I can do is hope and pray for everyone in the area.

BTW, love the turkey headed for high ground shot! Who said they were dumb?

[polarsusd81]

Cecil, you should have told me earlier. I am up here right now. We just got done with the first shift. Going back out soon.

[fishlakeman]

It's pretty rough here. Here's a few pics from a couple of the areas I've been too. There from my phone, but I was more concerned about getting work done than taking pretty pictures.

A massive earthen dike in a N. Fargo neighborhood on Sunday morning. We were baggin the houses on the wrong side of the dike.

My Boss's house against the Red on Monday afternoon. The river has risen over 7 ft since this picture. You can see the stick with the 41 ft mark on it, which is where the river's predicted to crest. We need to beef up this with 1000's more sandbags and add at least another foot to this one. You can also see the white stick nailed to the tree in the background, the top of that is 40 ft.

These are pics from yesterday of my buddies house in Oxbow (5 mi s. of fargo). He's in rough shape. All the dry land you see including the road is now under water. Water is up to the house dykes. This is the area where over 11 families have been rescued out of boats. There toughing it out trying to save it. We had to leave late last night because the last road outta there was being washed out.

Here's some pics on my way to Oxbow from the road. These are fields, not lakes or ponds. All landflooding and spillover from the river.

[mmeyer]

Wow, that's a terrible site! I wish the best for everyone involved. And thanks to those of you that have posted pics so that the rest of us can appreciate what others are going through, if that's even possible.

[Paul]

Due to the extrem nature of current conditions in Fargo/Moorhead, I will not be posting any more pics for a few days. Conditions are so bad, I will not go into the areas to hamper the flood fight efforts. I will post more a few days, unless I get some hands on photos with my phone or something.

Paul

[cliffy]

Paul: I admire your decision...its the right choice. The situation has moved past critical and now is life threatening. I have no doubt in my mind that if we have a failure in the dike system, we stand a high probability of loss of life.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE....unless you are working on the dikes...or otherwise authorized to be in the area...stay away.

To those who continue to volunteer...and those who drove from miles away to assist in this fight...my hat is off to you..and we are EXTREMLY grateful for your efforts.

Take care

Cliffy

[DonBo]

Do you think there'll still be need for volunteers there this weekend? Or will it just be wait and hope by then?

How about Bismark? Any idea when they're expecting the crest?

Really want to do what I can.

[Paul]

They will mabye need help this weekend still. Crest isn't expectd till saturday now. They are alos starting some evacuations of low lying areas, nursing homes and assisted living facilities. The City of Moorhead just issued a CODE RED within the last hour for sections of town south of I-94 and west of HWY 75. As Cliffy mentioned (since is is in law enforcment and knows a lot about this event) The next 48-72 hours is extremley critical. I spent this morning removing some home theatre systems for customers who have basement theatres in their homes. For one of our customers we moved all his furniture also for He and his wife. We crammed 5 people into my 4x4 pickup instead of our rear wheel drive service van and headed to South Fargo. 3 hours later when we tried to leave, the road we came in on was under water and had been closed. The situation here is dire. After a short break I am back to the flood fighting. WIll post some updates for people later on.

[gatorhunter]

How about these from COTR at Lockport, Manitoba? Some of you may have stayed there last week!

Water lapping at the floor of the house and about a foot below the motel floor this morning.

[polarsusd81]

Gatorhunter, hopefully you are out of there by now.

Here is my story...

What a trip it was up to the Red River Valley. When we left Elk River (where I picked up Mike) we started towards 94 and the snow was starting to come down lightly. As we drove farther and farther northwest, it got worse and worse. Not really a lot of snow but a lot of heavy wind and cold temps. We stopped and filled up in Alexandria and I picked up a pair of grippy gloves at Fleet Farm and a smart move that was. When we got out of the car though, the wind dang near knocked us over. It was blowing a steady 30 mph and gusting up to about 50. I94 from Alex to Fargo was glare ice and vehicles were in the ditch everywhere. We took that stretch pretty easy and made it up there okay right before noon.

As we pulled into town I called the volunteer hotline to see where they wanted us and they said they were full every where. We weren't going to have that so we just went to Nemzek Hall at MSUM and went it. They had some food waiting and busses were waiting outside. We gathered a group and jumped on a bus, no clue where we were going, but we made it there nearly an hour later. We had to detour around town to get to a house just north of town cause all the roads leading to it were flooded already. We filled sandbags and built a dike around this house as the water was coming up around us. The water surrounded this house on all four sides. Unfortunately, I think we wasted our time there as we ran out of sand half way through the construction of the dike and we had to leave cause the next truck of sand wasn't going to be there for an hour or more.

We got back to Nemzek around 5 and jumped right on another bus to head to the south side of town. This time the drive was a lot shorter, and we got to the drop off in about 10 minutes and within minutes found a congo line of sandbaggers and jumped in to finish off a dike. After that one was finished, we walked down closer to the river and found a house that was about to go under in a couple hours and helped them build a dike around the house. There were probably 100 people helping at this house, and they had a three car garage full of sandbags. In two hours, we emptied the garage of sand bags and built a dike 5 feet thick and 4 feet deep all the way around that house. We watched the river creep up behind us while we were working there. In the two hours at that location, the river rose behind us at least 6", and overnight, an additional 2 feet.

After that one was finished, we were spent so we hopped on a bus back to Nemzek. When we got there about 9:30, we still had nowhere to go to sleep so we started asking around. We heard of a school that had cots set up so we drove over there and got a hot shower and a cot. Unfortunately neither of us slept worth a [PoorWordUsage] so we were just as bad off when we got up this morning. But that didn't stop us from trying. We went back to Nemzek and hopped on another bus and went over to the Tech College in town. That turned out to be a huge disappointment though, after standing around for an hour waiting for them to get their stuff together, we decided to head back. Both of us felt like death, so we decided to call it quits and head back to town. The roads on the way back were way better than on the way. It took 3 and a half hours on the way back opposed to 5 to get there.

[cliffy]

They will maybe need help this weekend still. Crest isn't expectd till saturday now. They are alos starting some evacuations of low lying areas, nursing homes and assisted living facilities. The City of Moorhead just issued a CODE RED within the last hour for sections of town south of I-94 and west of HWY 75. As Cliffy mentioned (since is is in law enforcment and knows a lot about this event) The next 48-72 hours is extremley critical. I spent this morning removing some home theatre systems for customers who have basement theatres in their homes. For one of our customers we moved all his furniture also for He and his wife. We crammed 5 people into my 4x4 pickup instead of our rear wheel drive service van and headed to South Fargo. 3 hours later when we tried to leave, the road we came in on was under water and had been closed. The situation here is dire. After a short break I am back to the flood fighting. WIll post some updates for people later on.

Paul, thanks for your flood fighting efforts...keep'em coming.

On a rather sad note, our house is in the South Moorhead neighborhood that is being asked to evacuate. My wife and I are not going to be taking any chances. We are going to button up the hatches and leave. I am running on about two hours of sleep between slinging sand bags (or as I call them...sad bags) and working my 12s for the PD. We just finished diking up our window wells and clearing out our basement. We trying to put everything up as high as possible....and I couldn't resist posting one last time from my home....saying THANK YOU to all those that helped fight this flood. I am praying that in a week I will be back sitting at this desk catching up on all the latest postings. Thanks again.

Cliffy

[cliffy]

Polarsus81....from the bottom of my heart...thank you for your efforts.

[dockothebay]

To all of you in the valley and flood areas north - know that our thoughts and prayers are with you as you head into the weekend and the worst of this disaster. Thanks to those of you who were/are able to get up there and help. Stay safe!

[polarsusd81]

Here is bird's eye shot of the last house we worked on yesterday evening. When we started, the river was up high enough to just sneak past the fence in the back yard, by the time we left, it had overtaken the pool.

Cliffy, if you live south of 94, you probably know about where this one is. West of Bethesda a few blocks on the peninsula with the park.

Mike aka rangerguy83 is the one that rode up with me to help out as well.

[natalie]

If I had the money and time off work I'd be there in a heartbeat! Everyone is in our thoughts and prayers!!!!

[mmeyer]

Good Luck to you Cliffy!

[wall_guy_101]

Cliffy,

I wish you and all up there the very best of luck. You and yours will be in my thoughts and prayers.

[icefishing21]

was up there yesterday in fargo sand baging and it was a mess how much water there was

[buzzsaw]

What an absolute nightmare! I sure hope the people running that state get the almost yearly flooding situation delt with, its been going on way too long!