Massive floods swamp North Dakota

With rapidly rising floodwaters lapping at sandbag dikes and scores of rural homes surrounded, North Dakota scrambled Thursday to reinforce defenses against what is forecast to be its worst floods in recorded history.

Officials have had to blow up ice jams with explosives and rescue trapped residents by boat and helicopter as ice and snow clogged waters swamped the flat prairie state.

A heavy blizzard knocked out power and dumped wet snow and freezing rain Wednesday, making many roads impassable and saturating the already sodden earth.

"It's uncharted territory," Fargo Mayor Dennis Walaker said. "If nature has anything else to throw at us, it'd have to be a tornado."

President Barack Obama issued a federal disaster declaration for 34 counties and two Native American reservations as nearly the entire state remained under a major flood warning.

Low-lying homes across the region were evacuated as rivers and creeks spilled over their banks, though damage for now was largely restricted to water in basements.

Several bridges and roads were already closed due to flooding as an unusually heavy snowpack began to melt on top of land that has not yet fully thawed.

"The state has turned into a fishing pond and can't absorb any more snow or rain," said Patrick Slattery of the National Weather Service.

The biggest threat was the Red River, which runs along the North Dakota-Minnesota border and flows northward to Canada. In 1997 massive flooding from the river forced tens of thousands of people from their homes -- an event looking to be eclipsed by this weekend.

It was already 20 feet six meters above flood levels in Fargo and was forecast to rise several more before cresting on Saturday.

Fargo -- a city of about 92,000 -- was most at risk as it has not developed the extensive flood protection systems of upriver cities like Grand Forks and Winnipeg, Canada.

Thousands of volunteers, many in the city's Fargodome arena, filled 2.5 million sandbags to build miles of dikes as tall as a four-story building to hold back the rising river, which was at nearly 39 feet 11.9 meters deep Thursday.

But just as the exhausting bag-by-bag work seemed close to completion, forecasters raised their predicted crest level by a possible three feet.

"Conditions on the Red River at Fargo have grown increasingly dangerous over the past 24 hours," the weather service said in a bulletin late Thursday.

"The river is currently approaching record levels and showing no sign of slowing," it said, warning that flows upstream of the city have "produced unprecedented conditions" and "the river is expected to behave in ways never previously observed."

The crest could reach as high as 43 feet 13.1 meters by Saturday and continue at that level for three to seven days, the weather service predicted.

In 1897 the Red River reached a record 40.1 feet 12.2 meters in Fargo. The massive 1997 flood sent waters here to 39.57 feet 12 meters high.

More snow was forecast to fall on the Red River valley in the coming days and rain could worsen flood conditions next week.



Kasahara