Fargo officials told residents this week that they need to start preparing soon for what’s expected to be a third straight year of major spring flooding along the Red River.
‘I don’t think anybody is ready for this. Not three in a row,” Fargo Mayor Dennis Walaker said during the first public planning session for possible flooding on Monday.
A recent National Weather Service flood outlook shows a 20 percent chance that the river will surpass a record crest in Fargo and neighboring Moorhead, Minn., in 2009. There’s a 50 percent chance it will beat last year’s crest, which was the sixth-highest on record, the weather service said.
City officials said they plan to begin filling sandbags next month in a warehouse dubbed ‘Sandbag Central.” The city has 370,000 filled and shrink-wrapped sandbags in storage. The call for volunteers to fill an additional 2 million bags will likely come in mid-February, said Bruce Grubb, coordinator of the sandbagging effort.
Volunteers filled 1 million sandbags between March 1 and March 15 a year ago, he said. The river crested on March 20.
The city has bought out and removed dozens of homes from flood-prone areas in the last several years. Officials are negotiating to acquire about 10 more houses before the river floods this year, city administrator Pat Zavoral said.
‘It’s up to the property owners to decide,” Zavoral said. ‘None of these are condemnations. It’s all volunteering.”
The record crest of 2009 came in at nearly 41 feet. City officials are preparing this year to protect structures below 44 feet with sandbags, levees and other flood-control products.
Some neighborhoods are asking for help to construct so-called ‘Hescos,” the interlocking containers with heavy steel frames covered by high-tech material and filled with sand. April Walker, the city’s senior engineer, said residents in one neighborhood didn’t balk when told the Hescos would make a bigger mess out of their yards than would sandbags.
‘They’re just darn tired of bagging,” Walker said.
City officials plan to meet with the U.S. Army Corps of engineers later this week to review technical aspects of levee construction, said Mark Bittner, city engineer.
‘Is it time to make some decisions? I’m not sure,” Bittner said. ‘But it’s certainly time to plan.”
Topics Flood
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