Fargo races to batten down hatches

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Trenton Evenson helps move a family from a home in Fargo. (JOE BRYKSA / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS)

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Tim Corwin removes a portrait of his great-great-grandfather from his Fargo home Thursday night. (JOE BRYKSA / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS)

FARGO -- The reality of 13.1 metres could be seen all over Tim Corwin's face.

Corwin, who owns a palatial brick home on the west side of the Red River in Fargo, was frantically emptying his home on Thursday. Clothing still on the hangers, family heirlooms including a painting of his great-great-grandfather, were being hustled out of the front door into waiting pickup trucks and vans.

Corwin is working against time. In a few hours, the road in front of his house will be turned into a secondary "contingency" dike. Earth movers and dump trucks will build a two-metre clay wall that will cut off all of the waterfront homes in the upscale River Road neighbourhood.

"We're preparing to evacuate," the car dealership owner said with firm emphasis on the "preparing."

"We don't want to leave, but we're going to have to be ready for anything now."

Now that the Red River is approaching a record crest, the city of Fargo is ready for anything.

The most recent flood forecast estimates the river will crest at between 12.5 and 12.8 metres. However, there is a chance that precipitation and tributary flow could push that to 13.1 metres. Quite frankly, there was a time in this city when 13.1 metres was considered crazy talk.

The mighty Red River, the waterway that dictates fortunes for those who live in its precarious flood plain, had always threatened this bustling Prairie city with levels of 10.7 metres, or perhaps 11.3 metres. The city's flood protection system had been geared for that level.

The reality of 13.1 metres -- the potential level of the crest that is supposed to flow through downtown Fargo-Moorhead sometime on Saturday -- was only just starting to hit home Thursday.

A persistent winter storm blanketed the city in a low, claustrophobic greyness. The flashing lights of emergency vehicles could be seen on every major thoroughfare. Traffic on 1-94 South, the only route still open, was jammed with people trying to get home.

At the Fargodome, the bunker-like indoor football stadium on the campus of North Dakota State University, hundreds of volunteers raced to fill the 2.5 million sandbags required to protect the most vulnerable ares of Fargo-Moorhead. The cavernous arena throbbed with the music of the Rolling Stones (Start Me Up) and James Brown (I Feel Good) as an unseen disc jockey tried to keep spirits high.

The conditions are stifling; dust from the thousands of tons of sand mix with the acrid exhaust of a small legion of bobcats, forklifts and earth movers that are needed to move the sandbags from filling stations to pallets and out to the front lines of the flood fight.

David Daws, who lives in a part of south Fargo that could be vulnerable if the magic 13.1-metres mark arrives, took Thursday and today off to fill sandbags.

Daws said he expected the spring thaw to cause some flooding, but it wasn't until he saw a National Guard convoy racing up 1-29 past his neighbourhood to co-ordinate flood protection measures that he realized they were in for a fight of their lives.

"I saw those National Guardsmen, and the police cars escorting the sand trucks, and I thought holy bucket, this is really going to happen this time," said Daws.

The element of surprise is not, however, an excuse for the lack of permanent flood protection in this city. In 1997, it was Grand Forks that took the brunt of the spring flooding; Fargo was threatened but left relatively unscathed.

As a result, local, state and federal officials couldn't seem to come to a consensus on exactly what should be done to this community, which is bisected by the Red River.

There was a diversion constructed in West Fargo to protect against the ravages of Cheyenne River flooding. Some levees and permanent dikes were raised, but only to handle a river level of 11.3 or 11.6 metres. As a result, the most vulnerable areas have been sandbagged and re-enforced with temporary clay dikes.

In some of those most vulnerable areas, the dikes sit at maximum height of 13.2 metres, leaving less than 0.15 metres between salavation and disaster.

Kevin Molony is owner of a scenic 0.3-hectare lot that backs onto the Red. The water has now crept within 9.1 metres of his back patio. The normal riverbank is more than 150 metres away. For the next week or so, Molony will watch his dike, and the dikes built behind his neighbours' homes, and hope they do not fail. A failure in just one backyard could kick off a chain reaction that could claim the entire neighborhood, and large tracts of the entire city.

Will it be enough to withstand a crest of 13.1 metres? "I don't know," Molony said. "It has to be."

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition March 27, 2009 A4