Battling Seepage

A lift station failed last night and water began coming up the plugged drains in the basement. So far Dad and Shane have managed to keep up with it, sucking it up with the shop vac. This is the downstairs bathroom, where the toilet has been removed and the drain plugged and braced against sewage backup. The same thing was done here in the laundry room. The washing machine was pulled out to make room and a little intruder was found and caught!
Shane heads home today, but Adam is set to replace him.
If a little seepage is all we end up facing, we'll make it through just fine!

Mom & Dad's House

Work began early Friday morning as we set out to get sand and bags delivered to our area.
It was a little bit of chaos, but we finally figured out where we were going to build the dike and found a way to get the sandbags over there.

Here is our good friend Shane (who drove up from the cities to help),

my uncle Mick, and my Dad, taking a much needed rest.

While the men worked outside, the women continued to haul things up from the basement.
Here is Brooke and Mom clearing out the storage area of the laundry room.The downstairs family room is looking pretty empty.

We had to get Mom's new couch upstairs! Of course everything that came upstairs had to go somewhere.
This is the former guest bedroom.

There is a bed under all of that stuff!

The computer room is brimming over and

Dad's coyote keeps watch out the front window.

A view of the living room. All of the neighbors came together and decided that the smartest thing to do would be to build a dike behind all of the houses across the street from my parent's house. This would protect all of the interior houses should any of the main dikes fail. There wasn't a sandpile on our street, so we filled sandbags in the clubhouse parking lot and hauled them in trucks and on trailers to build our contingency dike. These are the 2 houses directly across the street from my parent's house. Above the crew is placing sandbags and below Jaccob and Lexi inspect the newly built dike!

We had a lot of great volunteers who came out to make this happen all in one day.We had just finished work on the dike and the basement, when our phone rang with the CODE RED emergency alert. The following was posted on The Forum's website and instantly repeated on various radio and television stations: "Moorhead officials are directing residents in the Country Club addition to evacuate immediately. The interior streets at Country Club addition may become impassable to motor vehicles in the event of temporary dike failure, according to a news release. Officials are directing that all residents of the addition evacuate immediately to a location outside of the flood area and do the following: Seek shelter with family or friends outside of the flood zone to conserve emergency resources. A Red Cross public shelter is available at Moorhead High School."

We decided to take their advice and get all get all of our vehicles and all the extra people out of there. Mom went to stay at Brooke's and we all headed out, leaving behind only Dad and Shane to watch and wait.

From Bad to Worse

On Thursday I headed out to sandbag with my good pal Erin (right) and her friend Lacey (left). We headed out to an area with numerous homes on the river in South Moorhead. I sandbagged in this same neighborhood during the '97 flood because so many high school friends lived there. It was fun even now to see so many old faces out on the streets pitching in to save their family and friend's homes. We stayed out of the passing line and opted to fill sandbags in the middle of the cul-de-sac.
Adam had me on strict orders after two days of sandbagging - NO MORE LIFTING!
  Above is the sandbagging crew and

below is a view from behind the house. After a few hours outside, it began to snow and we were thoroughly frozen. We decided to head over to the Fargodome to see if we could volunteer inside for awhile.
It was an impressive site to see so many people working in the dome. This place has produced a massive amount of sandbags over the past few days and operates 24 hours a day. We discovered that there were now only 2 ways to cross the river between Fargo and Moorhead, the Main Avenue bridge and I-94, so we thought we had better head out before we got trapped in traffic. It was craziness trying to get from the dome back to Moorhead and we spent a good hour and a half in traffic trying to cross the Main Avenue bridge. We were listening to the radio while we waited and heard the tragic news that the river crest prediction had now been moved up to 42 feet. At this level, I knew we'd have problems at my parent's house. A call to my dad confirmed that we would now need to sandbag. I called Mom and realized she was also stuck in traffic only a few blocks from where we were, so I hopped out of Erin's car and walked over to where Mom was stuck to ride home with her and get started at the house. Below are views from the Main Avenue bridge. This corner was already leaking, so crews were rushing in to get it under control.

Finally, here is a look at how the Country Club is fairing.
The north entrance to the Country Club has been closed for days,
so there is only one way in to get to my parent's house.

The water is slowly inching towards the road. It was an awful day for the houses on the river to work on their dikes.

This cul-de-sac is 2 streets behind the one my parent's live on

and many of the houses back here are on the river. The city came in and built clay dikes right down the street.

You can see it covered in snow on the left side of the street.

It's hard to see the water level because of the snow but it's right up there. Here is another clay dike that runs through the park straight across my parent's street.This is my parent's street.

 A few houses are on the wrong side of the clay dike

and have to ring their houses in sandbags. With the new crest prediction we're going to have to do a little dike building in spite of all this.

2009 Flood Fight

Well it's spring in the Red River Valley and we're once again facing a flood. This year the Red is supposed to crest higher than in the '97 Flood and people all over the area are scrambling as crest predictions keep rising and the date of the crest keeps getting moved closer. Adam and I've been out sandbagging a couple of times now, but this time I finally remembered my camera.

Today, we helped out in the small town of Wolverton, which is about 20 miles south of Moorhead and has a population of 122. Above is my brother-in-law Jeremy (on the left, in the waders) working on a pump to get this water out from behind the sandbag dike.Adam is in the blue sweatshirt above working with a busload of high school students to pass sandbags down the line. Below is my sister (middle) and her sister-in-law (who lives in Wolverton) and Adam taking a quick break. The mud was thick and made people unsteady until we brought over some pallets to stand on.Sadly, people sandbagged all around this house yesterday, but today the waters overtook the dike. The busses of volunteers kept coming,
so hopefully Wolverton gets all the help it needs to get those dikes built and save the rest of the town.

For more coverage of the flood and photos check out http://www.inforum.com/