News Cut: March 23, 2009 Archive

Floods: The rising creeks

Posted at 10:10 AM on March 23, 2009 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Disasters, Floods

Over the next few days, we'll hear a lot about Fargo-Moorhead, but there's more to flooding in the Upper Midwest than the Red River.

Out in North Dakota, the National Guard evacuated some people last evening in the Linton area who were stranded by rising water in creeks that were plugged with ice flows, according to a press release issued by the Guard today.

"The first rescue was of two citizens and two dogs from a farm in rural Carson, N.D. The second rescue of two citizens was from a farm near New Leipzig, N.D. Both farms were surrounded by four to five feet of floodwaters, making overland rescue impossible," it said.

These pictures were provided by the Guard:

These images bring to mind a question I usually have during these types of stories. If you've only got a few minutes, and you can only take what you can grab, what do you take?

I'm heading for the west-central region of Minnesota today, stopping first in Breckenridge and then on to Moorhead. If you're in the area, I'd like to stop and chat with you. Please contact me at bcollins@mpr.org.

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Facebook's flood fighters

Posted at 10:59 AM on March 23, 2009 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Disasters, Floods, Tech

The coming flood in the Fargo-Moorhead area has already been a test of social networking sites in an emergency. So far, the sites have passed with flying colors.
Photographer Kevin Tobosa, who lives in South Fargo, has helped organize volunteers to fill and move sandbags, and hit paydirt with Facebook, organizing the Fargo-Moorhead Flood Volunteer Network.

"I got an e-mail last Thursday with a call for volunteers. It just kind of hit me that we can really get the word out quickly... to a lot of people in real time using a social network like Facebook. We also have a Twitter account set up. People have this up and running at work, at home, going to their cellphones. E-mail seemed a lot slower, which is funny since it's always been known as a fast method to communicate," he told me today.

Tobosa says when he told Fargo's volunteer coordinator about his idea, "she thought maybe we could get about 50 volunteers and they'd mostly be young people." Tobosa set up the Facebook group on Thursday, sending out 100 "invites" to his network (he runs his photography business via Facebook.)

"Within 24 hours, we'd broken 1,000 (group members), within 48 hours we'd broken 2,000 and today we're at 3,000 people who are receiving our updates as they need volunteers," he said. "When we do put out a call for volunteers, we get that push, and now they're using that as their primary push and the press releases follow shortly thereafter. Just from the messages we've received via Facebook, people are thanking us for organizing it. A lot of people are out on spring break and hadn't realized how serious it is. People don't read the news when they're on vacation, but they are checking their Facebook and Twitter accounts, so that was a significant communication breakthrough."

Over the next week, Tobosa does not intend to change the purpose of his Facebook/Twitter efforts to a full-blown news-reporting effort. "The intent of this was never as a news outlet; there are a lot of news organizations that are already covering that. They have blogs on their sites. It was simply to be a voice for first-link volunteer coordination, to tell people where they were needed and what their urgencies are."

Tobosa has spent lots of time at "Sandbag University, in Moorhead and Fargo, locations where volunteers are filling and moving sandbags. "It's hard work. It's certainly back-breaking work, but there are a lot of people doing it," he said.

After our interview, he headed out to a dike being built a block from his house, which survived the '97 flood, but is on "the bubble" for the flood which is expected to crest Thursday or Friday.

Listen to the entire interview with Kevin Tobasa. Listen

(I'm heading to West Central Minnesota today. If you're in the area, please let me know.)

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Tales from the flood: Breckenridge

Posted at 9:31 PM on March 23, 2009 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Disasters, Floods

If you've ever traveled US Highway 1 from Miami to Key West, you know what it's like to drive around West Central Minnesota and eastern North Dakota tonight. Other than the water lapping the road edge on both sides, and the anticipation of a cold drink at your destination, there the similarity ends.

The flood is a disaster still waiting to happen in Fargo and Moorhead, but it arrived on Monday in Breckenridge, a town that was heavily damaged in the great flood of '97, but often loses out to its bigger neighbors to the north when it comes to attention.

Late Monday afternoon, the fire department and other volunteers on the Breckenridge side started putting up a flood wall they purchased after the '97 flood. It took awhile to figure out where Part A connects to Part B, and the Red River wasn't waiting. It had already inundated the town park. Within a half hour, however, the wall was up, protecting the western flank from the rising river, and bulldozers began building a dike across the Minnesota Ave. bridge, cutting the city off. Wahpeton, North Dakota was soon to be on its own.

"I've never lived through a flood before," Breckenridge resident Carri Johnson told me as she helped assemble the flood wall. She said Monday was the first day she's been nervous. "I've never lived anywhere where a flood was even a threat, so I've just been watching people's faces because they lived through the 1997 flood and then day by day you can see the fear and... so I'm really watching my husband's face and when he gets scared, that's when I'm going to get scared."

Her husband, a firefighter, was in Breckenridge for the '97 flood.

"I saw a little nervousness today," she said.

She says she has volunteers ready to help her sandbag around her home if the water goes higher. (Listen)

It will go higher, says Captain Chuck Moore of the Minnesota National Guard (above right). He's in charge of about 40 Guardsmen, who were sent down to Breckenridge at the city's request after they were initially deployed to Moorhead.

In a makeshift office on the second floor of the Breckenridge City Hall, within spitting distance of the river, Moore coordinates six teams who have been deployed around the city. They're keeping an eye on a sandbagging location south of town because he's heard some communities have tried to steal sandbags from other communities.

"Sometime tomorrow (Tuesday) is the crest... they're expecting it to crest for two or three days," he said. (Listen)

It's not just the Red River that's causing the problem. In Breckenridge, the Otter Tail River has also spilled over, leaving mud down one city street. Across the Red River, the Sheyenne River is cutting off access to the bright lights of what passes for the big cities here.

The curse of March is that four or five months from now, if history holds, there'll be a shortage of water here and whatever crops can be planted this year will be parched. But for now, it's Water World in this section of the Upper Midwest.

Not long after I talked to both Johnson and Moore, I found myself cut off from Moorhead, my final destination for the day. I'd already been told that Highway 75 was closed, so I headed to North Dakota for Interstate 29, but it was closed, too. I drove another 25 miles, and found every road north blocked.

I turned around and headed back to Breckenridge, but by then the bridge into downtown had been sealed. I tried several back streets and found Highway 210 open enough to get into town. By the time darkness fell, so had heavy rain, which flooded most of the roadways north to Moorhead.

I shared the road only with the occasional dump truck, carrying sand to the river.

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