Fargo Neighborhood Evacuated as Waters Rise

Along the banks of this city, the Red River surpassed its highest level in history Friday morning, forcing the emergency evacuation of one neighborhood before dawn and leading city leaders here, once cheerfully upbeat, to sound far more dire.

“We do not want to give up yet,” Mayor Dennis Walaker of Fargo said late Thursday night after receiving yet another piece of gruesome news. Forecasters now believe the Red River will go right on rising, and by Saturday overtake the record set here more than a century ago by two feet or even more, much higher than anyone here had earlier believed possible.

“We want to go down swinging — if we go down,” the mayor said, as he urged his city to summon the energy to build the dikes that protect it yet another foot higher by Friday night.

“I’m going to be devastated if we lose,” said Mr. Walaker, who had, only a few days ago, expressed optimism, even certainty, that Fargo, a city of 90,000 and North Dakota’s most populous, would be fine.

By Friday morning, some hospitals here had transferred patients to other facilities miles away, and nursing homes had sent residents to relatives’ homes on high ground. Major roads here were closed, to allow trucks carrying more loads of sandbags to reach levees as fast as possible. And after about 100 people, including some residents of a nursing home, in one Fargo neighborhood and a large swath of neighboring Moorhead, Minn., were forced to evacuate Thursday night, officials on Friday ordered residents from about 150 more Fargo homes to leave just after 2 a.m. The authorities said they found a leak in a levee near those homes, and were racing to repair it. Residents, meanwhile, could be seen trudging out by foot, bearing belongings in bone-cold temperatures, local news reports said.

While flooding conditions have threatened much of North Dakota and parts of western Minnesota, and some rural communities are already under water, all eyes on Friday were on this city and on Moorhead, a city of 34,700 just across the Red River. More than a thousand members of the National Guard had been called in to add more sand to the area’s already enormous dikes, but even weather forecasters seemed at a loss to be sure what might come next.

“This is definitely ground zero right now,” said Patrick Slattery, a spokesman for the National Weather Service. “Once you get here, into predictions above the levels we have ever seen before, you’re taking about unbroken ground. Even we don’t know for certain what’s going to happen.”

People here found themselves facing added challenges given the singular dimensions of this flood. Once the river crests on Saturday, it is expected to stay at those swelled, highest levels for several days. Dikes that hold for a few hours may be in trouble in a matter of days, the authorities here say.

The temperature here, too — 10 degrees on Friday morning with a wind chill reported at 4 degree below zero — tested the stamina of thousands of volunteers. It also led some to worry about the condition of the piles sandbags. Would sandbags slide and give way on frozen ground? Would frigid sandbags allow water to flow through rather than holding it back?

In Fargo, a city where residents continued to offer applause at public meetings for their political leaders even as the news grew worse and worse this week, tempers were clearly tested by late Thursday. Kristy Fremstad, who owns rental property in Fargo, pleaded with city officials to add sandbags to the dike near her land.

“We’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting,” she tearfully told city commissioners at an emergency meeting, (also attended by Gov. John Hoeven, Senator Byron L. Dorgan and Representative Earl Pomeroy). “I need some help.”

Schools and businesses were closed. And some people in between the city’s primary dike system and a second set of newly created emergency dikes were advised to evacuate. Volunteers, now days into their work, went right on filling sandbags at the Fargodome all through the night.

Across the bulging river, in Moorhead, residents who had been advised to evacuate found themselves on roads jammed with other cars, (and, in some cases, still covered in snow). The congested streets led some here, including Mayor Walaker, to worry about how a broader evacuation plan, if one were required, would play out here.

Adding to the complications of such a concept, local officials acknowledged, was the fact that no one could be sure where the dikes might break or what roads — given rising waters and falling snow — might be passable.

In some rural areas to the south of Fargo and elsewhere, water had already filled homes. White caps, one law enforcement officer said, could be seen around what had once been farm fields. Rescues were made with boats and helicopters, even as other residents, surrounded on all sides by water, insisted on staying put.

Around Bismarck, the state capital, flooded neighborhoods sat empty as demolition crews battled dangerous ice jams on the Missouri with explosives. Water levels had dropped some there, offering hope.

“Our biggest concern is an ice jam in the river just 10 miles north of Bismarck, which we’re hoping does not dislodge,” said Bill Wocken, that city’s administrator. “An ice jam is kind of like my teenage daughter. Sometimes there is just no way to predict what they’ll do next.”

In Grand Forks, which was devastated by flooding in 1997, two of the three bridges leading in and out of town were already closed. But city officials seemed hopeful that a $409 million Army Corps of Engineers flood protection project, completed two years ago, would save the city from the Red River this time.

“We remain cautious, vigilant and watchful,” said Kevin Dean, a city spokesman.

Fargo Neighborhood Evacuated as Waters Rise