"All of the fountains of the abyss burst forth"

 05 Apr 2009 03:36:41 am

Finally, after two weeks of being on call our assistance was needed to help out with the flooding of the Red River. This River represents the western border of Minnesota, and the Eastern Border of North Dakota. It flows from the south to the north into Canada. This is where the problem lies. When the southern reaches of the river thaw out, and sends all of the melted snow/rain northward to portions of the river where the flowage is still mostly frozen you get a flood.

The last one up here took place in 1997, so the local emergency management people have had some experience in dealing with the high waters. The situation up here was a worst case scenario and the hydrological equation looks something like this... Big melting period with warm weather + Cold snap/winter storm + Warming trend + rain on snow = Flood.

The River isn't really all that large, smaller than the Wabash, but the geology up here is a little different from back home. Back in L town the Wabash has to its right or left a pretty definite river valley that keeps the high waters at bay for the most part. It is wider in some areas than others, but you can see a definite change in topography as you approach from either side. In Fargo the river valley is not present. You have the river and then land relatively on the same level. I believe it is called an alluvial plane.
So no natural barriers exist to stop the flow of water. The more water there is, the farther it spreads away from the river. The river had already crested once, I believe that it was the second highest level ever recorded. If you look at this picture you can see where the ice on the trees formed with the high water mark.

Our assignment was to man pumping stations located within a residential area on the north side of Moorhead, Minnesota. These pumps keep the storm water sewers from overflowing, and keeps homes sewers from backing up. The pumps looked like this…

They are loud diesel engines that move some serious water. The pumps all ran fairly well, and only needed checking once an hour or so. As you can imagine there was a lot of time spent sitting in the truck.

We had two crews, a day crew and a night crew. I was on the day crew, and in charge of pumps 26, 25, and 28. The picture earlier was of pump 24. From pump 24 to 25 was under water.

The sheer number of sand bags that were put up in this area is mind boggling. Every house save two or three was defended by a perimeter of sandbags standing three feet high or so. Crazy to think of how much man power that took. And they were all volunteers!!! One of the head engineers that helped us out looked like he hadn’t slept in two weeks, which he probably hadn’t. He was at the end of his rope, but he still took the time to thank us for our work, saying that our new energy refueled every one else’s tank. Just in that day he had gotten a pay-loader stuck, dumped ten gallons of diesel into its hydraulic fill reservoir, and had a pump regurgitate poop water all over him…But he laughed it off and moved onto the next thing. That was pretty inspiring to me.
Another inspiring event was from an elderly lady who had to take an airboat to her house to survey the damage. She came back from her boat ride cradling her lap dog in her arms with the biggest smile on her face. “The second floor is dry!!!” She said, this smile reminded me of how I would smile if the cubs had just one the World Series. I was sure she was so happy because her house had been completely spared, but just the fact that her second floor was dry made her jump for joy. Talk about being able to make lemonade out of lemons. She also was quick to thank all of us.
Here are just some pictures of the high water somewhere behind this water, was this lady’s house…Between pump 24, and in front of pump 25 on the map.


The road on the map that says whirl pools with circular squiggles was because the force of the water trying to flow through the culverts had actually formed three whirl pools side by side…If you fell into one of these you weren’t coming up. They were about 4 feet in diameter.

It was really sketchy to drive on this road, and we tried to avoid it if at all possible.
These home owners were not as lucky. There house, although sand bagged, didn’t last the flood. Something sparked and it burned to the ground. If you look closely you can make out a chimney and some appliances that was all that was left.

Finally, here are some pictures of the Red as you cross from Moorhead to Fargo.



These people are not out of the water yet so to speak. After this week’s blizzard, the river is supposed to crest again in a week and a half. So we may be going back. In the time we were there the water levels had receded about 2 feet. So it’s dropping, but perhaps not for long. The residents of the area will be working on clean up for a long long time. We can only hope that Mother Nature cooperates.

Category : General | Posted By : paul | Comments [3] | Trackbacks [0]