Blog der Familie Brown » Flood 09

Saturday – River Crest

jeremy — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 17:17:04 +0000

The river crested at 40.82′ earlier today. Perhaps this marks the beginning of the slow decrease. The city stopped the sandbagging efforts last night. Moorhead still is calling for volunteers. Basically we are all in a holding pattern as the city and National Guard patrol the dikes and watch for undue seepage and breaks.

Summary of last few days.

jeremy — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 00:57:05 +0000

This video has a lot of the common scenes from around town over the past few days. (The music isn’t exactly my taste, but hey, you can mute it if you want )

Heck, maybe it’s almost over: the river seems to only very gradually go up in the past few hours. Granted, the river is a long way from being normal, and all it would take is a little precipitation and melting to cause more problems, but there’s some good hope.

Day 5, Evening

jeremy — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 22:17:06 +0000

At 5 pm, it certainly looks like things might have settled down a little bit. The city is preparing for the worst, and we haven’t had the catastrophes with the sewage system that Moorhead has had. There have been a few evacuations, the last I’ve heard was the high rise on 2nd Ave and Main that borders one of the temporary clay dikes.

The water is creeping up into the sports complex along I-94. It’s still a thin sliver, just like it was at 1 pm. The rise has really slowed down, and we are now under the prediction.

Man, it’s hard to get a good perspective over a 4′ wall from across the street.

Flood, Day 5

jeremy — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 15:15:36 +0000

We have more or less buttoned up the house, and are waiting should the worst happen. So far, so good, and we should be safe up to and a bit beyond the projected crest of 43′. If the power goes off, so will this web site.

The city is requesting that people only volunteer locally or to fill sandbags at the Fargo Dome. We can’t get up there, due to the road closures. (They cleared corridors for the National Guard to get materials to the dikes. So far, nothing due directly to water.)

Since I can’t get any more local shots: the Civil Air Patrol has posted area photos.

We’ve started to have some dikes fail. There is some seepage in a dike Northeast of me, but the Army Corps of Engineers seems to think they can shore things up. Across the river in Moorhead, MN, things are much worse. They have evacuated most of the riverside, and everything West of 20th Street should plug their lower sewage lines.

View Larger Map

Flood Update, Day 4

jeremy — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 14:31:10 +0000

I spent almost 8 hours working the sandbagging line Southeast of the water treatment plant yesterday. We added two feet to the tops of the sandbag dikes.

View Larger Map

Flood Update, Day 3

jeremy — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 20:56:15 +0000

We officially entered the major flood stage today. That is 30 feet. 18′ is where minor flooding begins. Most of Fargo’s flood protection stops at about 40′. They are predicting a crest at about 41′ on Saturday/Sunday, and because of that, the whole town has been really hopping. The three colleges in town cancelled classes, as did the high schools, and most are helping with the sandbagging efforts. The city reported that they made nearly a half-million sandbags yesterday. They have some nifty portable walls that the National Guard constructed, then filled with dirt. Those are between my house and the river.