Thursday 13 – Flood 2011

Welcome to Fargo. Grab a Sandbag please. Here in eastern North Dakota we are dealing with our 3rd straight major flood. This year it has all been very quiet and laid back. If you are only in the city and not having to drive anywhere, you would hardly know there’s a flood. That’s because we knew this one was coming. In 2009 we had a mere 9 days to build miles and miles of sandbag dikes. This year we started building sandbags in February. And the river crested at 38.75 feet, the 4th highest crest in history. It is receding now, slowly. We’re expecting up to 5 inches of snow on Thursday nmight and friday, so that may slow things down. But the real problem now is in the rural areas. If you look at these pics and onder why is there a foot of water on the interstates, it because we live on completely flat land. Pour a glass of water on a table, and it will cover the entire table. Not very deeply, but it will keep running until something stops it. Here, there are no hills to stop it, so it just goes everywhere. In my county we have over 60 miles of roads closed, and another 50 miles that are drivable but under at least 6 inches of water. One of my co-workers Carla Busche (I wrote Sleeping With the Wolf for her), has to drive for almost two hours to work, since so many of the roads are flooded and everyone crawls along at a snail’s pace on the few roads that are open. It’s normally a half hour from her farm to work, but now she has to leave at 4:45 am to punch in by 7:00. Her husband takes the kids to daycare partly by boat.Fargo is weathering the flood well, but Valley City, only 55 miles away, is fighting hard. Pray for them. Here are 13 pics of our flood:Honey, we’re gonna need the boat.

This is prairie land, not a lake.