Becky and I spent the morning doing the sandbagging thing again today. It was quite an operation we had going today. We (and about 60 other people) were at one of the richest people in the valley’s house, Ron Offutt, who lives in a mansion at a bend in the Red River. The river was up to about 35′ today and it went up I’d say about 6" while we were there. We started off at a reasonable pace – a skidsteer would haul a palette full of sandbags and the three lines that had formed would put out the sandbags within a couple minutes. Then we’d have a few minute break before the next one would come.
At this point though, the city thought they were doing well with sandbags and this was one of the few areas that wasn’t up to 41′, so we started to receive an onslaught of sandbags as another couple semis pulled up and a few more skidsteers rolled into action. We went non-stop for about 90 minutes – and I’d say we handled 15 bags a minute during that time. There were some sandbags that were frozen and a ton of them that were filled to the brim and very heavy. We somehow survived this long enough to build a pretty nice, 42′ high wall in front of Offutt’s neighbor’s house in town. A camera crew from some Canadian station showed up to catch us in action, but I’d have to search pretty hard to find myself on TV.
We left about 12:30 because we were exhausted and the effort was nearly done at this part of the river. With the comments we’d heard, we thought Fargo was doing well and the flood prep effort was in good shape throughout town. Then about 3 or 4 o’clock we started hearing that the river was going to crest on Saturday at 41′ instead of the 39-40 that had been predicted before. This means that the sandbag dikes need to be moved up to 43′ tall in order to make sure the city is safe. Most of the dikes were built up to 41 or 42′ high, so this means a ton of help will be needed to build enough sandbags up to support the 43′ high dikes. We’ve received quite a few requests for help tonight, so we’ll be back at it again tomorrow morning, and probably for the full day.
I can barely lift my arms after today’s workout, so I’ll leave it here and pick up more tomorrow. I still didn’t take any pictures today – I need to do that to help capture the scene tomorrow.
Eric
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