From bad to worse in Fargo

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This article was published 27/03/2009 (6267 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

FARGO, N.D. — Officials ordered the evacuation of one Fargo neighbourhood and a nursing home late Thursday after authorities found cracks in an earthen levee built to protect the area from the threat of the rising Red River.

Fargo residents have been scrambling in subfreezing temperatures to pile sandbags along the Red River. They spent much of Thursday preparing for a record crest of 12.5 metres — only to have forecasters add up 50 centimetres to their estimate.

The first estimate sparked urgency among thousands of volunteers in Fargo but the second sparked doubts about whether a 13-metre-high wall of water could be stopped. In Moorhead, City Manager Michael Redlinger said portions of his city’s dike could not be easily raised to withstand a 13-metre crest.

The old estimate was 12.5 metres by Saturday afternoon and thousands of volunteers laboured throughout the day to raise the dikes around North Dakota’s largest city to 13 metres. City and emergency officials had said they were confident the city would make it but will now have to build higher.

The U.S. National Weather Service said in guidance issued late Thursday afternoon that the Red could reach 13 metres. It said water levels could remain high for up to a week — a lengthy test of on-the-fly flood control.

Residents were not in immediate danger, and floodwaters were not flowing over the levee, Mayor Dennis Walaker said Thursday night. The evacuation was being enforced as a precaution.

Officers were going door to door to the roughly 40 homes in the River Vili neighbourhood and evacuating Riverview Estates nursing home. Authorities also called for the voluntary evacuation of about 1,000 people who live between the main dikes and backups in various parts of the city. That evacuation could become mandatory, officials said.

Authorities across the river in Moorhead, Minn., also stepped up evacuations Thursday. They recommended residents leave the southwestern corner of the city and a low-lying township to the north.

Fargo, a city of 92,000, unveiled a contingency evacuation plan Thursday afternoon but at least four nursing homes already had begun moving residents by then.

Fargo’s largest hospital also began evacuating patients Thursday. About 180 people were being transferred by air, ambulances and buses to hospitals in Bismarck, Minneapolis, Sioux Falls, S.D., and elsewhere, a MeritCare Hospital spokesman said.

The U.S. government announced a disaster declaration Thursday for seven Minnesota counties. The entire state of North Dakota had already been given a disaster designation earlier in the week.

— The Associated Press