Town hoping Wednesday move helps
Elsie, one of the two Stensgard family dogs, stands on the earthen and sandbag dike surrounding the Stensgard home (not pictured) which overlooks a flooded outbuilding as the Red River continues to rise on Wednesday in Fargo, N.D. Due to the flooding, the Stensgard home can only be reached by boat.
BISMARCK, N.D. – Demolition crews blasted a huge ice jam in the Missouri River in a bid Wednesday to open a channel, like pulling out a giant plug to drain a flood threatening the city.
“We are cautiously optimistic,” Bismarck Mayor John Warford said after the string of explosives went off. He said officials would have a better sense Wednesday night, but said water appeared to be moving.
Water backing up behind the dam of ice blocks already had forced the evacuation of about 1,700 people from low-lying areas in North Dakota’s capital city.
On the eastern side of the state, volunteers continued stacking sandbags to protect Fargo from the rising Red River, as the city prepared to distribute evacuation route information.
The Missouri River jam, created by ice floating down the Heart River, was made up of chunks of ice up to 3 feet thick and the size of small cars, said Assistant Water Commission Engineer Todd Sando. It was about 11 miles downstream from the city.
Crews from Advanced Explosives Demolition, with help from the National Guard, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Coast Guard, drilled holes in the ice to detonate explosives and try to force the jam to float away.
Residents of low-lying subdivisions in Bismarck and neighboring Mandan were told to evacuate, and Fox Island residents Jane and Michael Pole didn’t need much prodding.
“We just grabbed a bag, threw some stuff in and left,” Jane Pole said.