Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Flood Fight

As many of you are probably aware through national and local news, Fargo is in a desperate fight against the Red River of the North. The last few days have been surreal with the overwhelming effort of the community to sandbag and volunteer. I am in awe of the unselfish nature of others to help their fellow man.

My neighborhood borders the river and we have been frantically making sandbag dikes at the end of our street and two streets north of us. My husband, son and I have been volunteering - in fact, I haven't seen our son very much in the last two days - school is let out for high schoolers and college kids to help and he's been in all parts of Fargo - doing his part. And it's hard work! Some of those sandbags can weigh up to 30 lbs! It's a human assembly line to get them laid down to protect these homes.

So far, we are safe and dry and city engineers came out to our site and we are confident our dikes will hold - others in different parts of Fargo-Moorhead have a tougher fight. As a write this, I hear they are evacuating people in south Fargo already. It's very disconcerting. I hope and pray that we can hold off the floodwaters and Fargo-Moorhead suffers minimal damage.

In the past 48 hours we've dealt with rain, thunder, lightning, rising waters and now a winter storm with 4-8 inches of more snow. It's a good thing we are resilient.

Here is a link that shows photos of what is happening on my street. http://www.flickr.com/photos/36626034@N07/

If you want to find out more - please visit http://www.inforum.com/. Other areas of the state are dealing with flooding and evacuations too.

Please keep the people of Fargo - and all of North Dakota in your prayers!

3 comments:

Connie said...

Beth - I heard about this on the news. Sending thoughts and prayers for the safety of your home.

Anonymous said...

It must be a very worrisome time, as you watch the sand dikes to see if they hold. I hope you remain above the waterline, and that the flood waters recede. It would be difficult to watch as other neighbourhoods are threatened, but it sounds like you are all working hard to help the community.

Susie said...

I'll definitely keep everyone on my prayer list. I pray you guys stay safe.