BISMARCK, N.D. — One ice jam clogging the Missouri River prevented more water from pouring downstream into flood-threatened Bismarck today, but officials considered dynamiting another jam of car-size ice chunks that backed water upstream into the metro area.
Officials had called for more volunteers to help with sandbagging as residents of some low-lying areas were told to evacuate.
Gov. John Hoeven said today that although some water was flowing around the upstream ice jam the river appeared to be holding steady.
“Since midnight, the Missouri River has not risen,” Bismarck Mayor John Warford said at a news conference.
The National Weather Service backed off a report that the upstream ice jam had broken, in an area known as Double Ditch, releasing as much as 1 to 2 feet of water toward the city. However, meteorologist Joshua Scheck said the ice jam was unpredictable and the weather service was maintaining its flash flood warning for a three-county area.
“The fact that it could break at any time is bad news. But right now, the ice jam around the Double Ditch has not broken,” Warford said.
Officials hope to break up the downstream ice jam, possibly using explosives. That jam, created by ice flowing 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.
“The ice is just solid as a rock,” he said.
Maj. Gen. David Sprynczynatyk, commander of the North Dakota National Guard, said a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers expert on river ice jams and explosives experts from an Idaho company surveyed the area by helicopter today.
The call for volunteers today in Bismarck was made after residents of low-lying subdivisions in Bismarck and Mandan were told to evacuate.
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.
Some 200 miles east of Bismarck, officials also called for more sandbagging volunteers in Fargo, and its cross-river neighbor, Moorhead, Minn., where the Red River was projected to crest at 39 to 41 feet Friday evening. It had risen to 34 feet by early today. The record for Fargo is 39.6 feet set in the 1997 flood.
Officials said the flood threat intensified when the region was struck Tuesday by a blizzard that had shut down wide areas of the northern Plains.
President Barack Obama declared North Dakota a federal disaster area, which means the federal government will pay 75 percent of state and local government costs for the flood fight.
Sand supplies briefly ran out in Fargo early today because icy roads made travel difficult for a Minnesota supplier. City officials quickly found a local supplier and said they were 95 percent done with the effort to raise dikes to 42 feet. Engineers were being sent out to make sure the dikes were sound.
Snow was still falling today in the Red River Valley region, with several inches on the ground, and people were advised not to travel. The continuing bad weather forced Grand Forks to cancel two busloads of volunteers who planned to head upstream to Fargo.
More sandbagging was planned in part of Grand Forks, the city hardest hit by the 1997 Red River flood. An elaborate dike system was built after that disaster. The Red had risen to nearly 42 feet in Grand Forks this morning with a crest of 50 to 53 feet projected for Monday or Tuesday, compared with the record of 54.4 feet set in 1997.
The Bismarck area got 8 inches of snow from the blizzard, with wind gusting to more than 45 mph, the weather service said this morning. Light snow continued falling this morning, with a temperature of 19 degrees.
The blizzard had blocked hundreds of miles of highways in Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota and Nebraska. The southwestern North Dakota town of Marmarth reported 22.5 inches of snow and up to 2.5 feet of snow fell in South Dakota’s rugged Black Hills.
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