Sandbaggers race against time as Red River rises

By Bill McAuliffe, Matt McKinney and Bob von Sternberg

Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

(MCT)

FARGO, N.D. _ Mud-soaked and aching, residents of Breckenridge, Minn., spent Monday trying to build a walled city against the marauding Red River and its tributaries.

By evening, after a day of sandbagging to fill gaps in permanent dikes, residents and officials believed they were protected 1 foot higher than the 19-foot crest predicted to pass through the city beginning at midday Tuesday.

"That was critical," said Wilkin County highway engineer Tom Richels. "We're feeling pretty good right now."

Thousands of volunteers up and down the Red River Valley toiled mightily Monday as potential record flooding threatened those along the north-flowing river. In Fargo, where classes at North Dakota State University were postponed indefinitely so students could help, sandbaggers worked to fill nearly 2 million sandbags ahead of Thursday's anticipated crest.

"This is coming up way faster than in 1997. We had a lot more time then," said college student Krista Ramstad as she took a break Monday night with tired friends who were filling sandbags in the Fargodome. Some of them had worked since Sunday morning.

Already main roads _ Interstate 29 on the North Dakota side and Hwy. 75 in Minnesota _ were closed between Wahpeton, N.D., and Fargo because portions were under water.

Richels estimated Monday morning that 80 percent of his county's roads outside the city of Breckenridge were under water and closed.

It probably will only get worse as heavy rain, eventually turning to snow, will bedevil the region this week.

According to the National Weather Service, rain will accumulate by as much as an inch before turning Tuesday night to snow that will linger through the rest of the week.

That could be a mixed blessing, as colder temperatures slow the melting that's feeding the flood, but make it tougher for volunteers to erect the cities' flood defenses.

As night fell Monday, heavy rain was falling in Breckenridge, accompanied by thunder and lightning.

Rain of more than half an inch in the region could push the city's crest toward 20 feet, higher even than the 19.4-foot record set in 1997, which devastated Breckenridge, its sister city of Wahpeton across the river, and began a wave of misery that culminated at Grand Forks, N.D., and beyond.

For some homeowners, slinging sandbags is becoming a wearying spring routine.

Chris Vedder, heaving sandbags in a long line of volunteers trying to protect some private homes across the street from where she and her husband live, said the effort had a strange effect on her.

"You get happy to see another semi" filled with sandbags, she said. "It's a real sick excitement."

Vedder's home in Breckenridge was raised 3 feet after the foundation caved in 1997. "We can't keep doing this," she said.

Hydrologists have indicated that this year's flooding is the result of not enough of last fall's record rains draining into rivers. Much of that rain froze solid and deep in the soil, holding it all winter, along with deeper-than-average winter snows.

That said, a diversion ditch built after the 1997 flood is supposed to keep the water away from downtown Breckenridge. "We think it's going to do what it was designed to do," said Steve Buan, a hydrologist for the National Weather Service's regional forecast.

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The concrete floor of the Fargodome, the city stadium that was supposed to be getting prepared for a championship rodeo competition, instead held hundreds of volunteers swarming six piles of sand. There was no hi-tech sandbagging machinery here, just shovels and white plastic bags. A crowd of 200 volunteers swarmed the floor Monday evening, their pants and sweatshirts covered in sand as they piled 40-pound bags onto pallets for waiting bulldozers and trucks to haul away.

"The evening shift is the toughest and we've had to shut down for lack of volunteers in the middle of the night," Fargo Mayor Dennis Walaker said. "But today, we've got people coming from (NDSU) and the high school, so that should help. We still need 400 to 500 people a shift to pull this off. But things are looking better than yesterday."

Eighty football players from NDSU took shifts Monday. Public high school students were to be released if they wanted to help. Even inmates got into the act, with Cass County jail residents filling sandbags overnight.

"I think today was a really good day," said Kristi Brandt, who held open a bag as her sons Alex, 6, and Jacob, 11, worked nearby.

Memories of the 1997 flood that devastated Grand Forks have people in Fargo prepared for the worst. Ramstad, the college student who said her family lost half of their belongings in that flood, said her parents were once again shoring up their house in Ada, Minn., against a rising tide. "I was supposed to leave for school (Sunday) when my mom started screaming from the basement because the water's rushing down the walls," she said.

Her father, a highway department supervisor, hasn't been home for five days while he fights the flood elsewhere.

Ramstad said she doesn't want to go back to school. For now, she wants to sandbag.

"We were out earlier building dikes," said Jeran Hilde, who said he worked until 1 a.m. early Monday on the relief effort.

"I couldn't sit up this morning," said Ramstad, whose jeans were covered with sand. "This is pretty much what I've been wearing for the last 48 hours."

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A student from Horace, N.D., a small town just outside Fargo, said crews shut off the city water recently to relieve the drains.

"They just turned it back on today but the whole town smells like sewer," said Jaden Fedora. No one has lost their house there, she said, but there wasn't much in the way of sandbags to stop the water.

Back on the floor of the Fargodome, volunteers prepared to work into the night.

"We can use as many as we can get," said Capt. Lee Soeth of the Fargo Fire Department.

"I'm doing as much as I can, I guess," said Matt Blum, an NDSU student.

He held a bag open while a friend loaded it with sand. Behind him sat a pile of empty white bags.

Nearby, Fargo elementary school teacher Sheri Wanzek said she planned to stay, "until I tire out."

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