Some of you may remember the historic flood from last year, some of you may not. I went through it first hand, by getting out of school to fill sandbags and by building a sandbag dike around my entire house. It was an extremely stressful time with the river exceeding its predictions everyday. We were never quite sure how bad it was going to turn out. As you all may know, it turned out bad. With all the trouble Valley City and surrounding communities went through in 2009, everyone was hoping for a better 2010.
The first flood predictions started out terrible. Many were suspecting another flood like the one we had just gone through. Luckily, Valley City was fortunate enough to go through nothing in comparison to the water we saw last year. The latest crest for the Sheyenne River, predicted by the National Weather Service, was 13.7 feet on March 25th, safely below the 15 food flood stage. This is not even comparable to the 20.58 foot crest last year. Fargo also fell short of the record that 2009 brought. The Red River crested at a historic 40.84 feet on March 28, 2009, exactly one year ago today. Today, the Red stands at 34.07 feet. It is well over an 18 foot flood stage, but easily manageable.
Sadly, other communities were not as fortunate as Valley City and Fargo were. Harwood, North Dakota is still experiencing extremely high water, a level of 891.26 on Monday. Interstate 29, near Harwood, has head to head traffic because of the overland flooding that the south bound lane closed. One of the few ways in and out of nearby Harwood is by boat. Unfortunately, a resident of Lake Shure uses her boat as the only way to get in and out of her home.
Although all of the crest predictions get many community members in a tizzy, no one could have stayed afloat without the help of the local papers, radio stations and television channels. They always had the most recent river levels, how to prepare, and what exactly to suspect. The media was and still is so very important as an information center in emergencies, like some of us experienced in 2009 and some that are experiencing it now. I was very thankful for the constant news, mostly bad news, but always informative news that the media brought us in such hard times.
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I am so glad that Valley City and Fargo did not flood like it did last year, I was actually dreading living in Valley City again this year. I also dealt with this first hand by getting out of school to sandbag, having days off from school because of the floodwaters in Valley City. When I first heard that it was going to flood again as bad as it did last year I thought that we were going to have to deal with sand-bagging and I got sick to my stomach, but as soon as I heard we wouldn’t hit major flood stage it quite literally made my day. It was always helpful that the Times Record and Valley City radio stations did a great job reporting the most up to date information.
ReplyDeleteI am also glad it did not flood this year. Last year I worked my butt off trying to help other people, especially my girlfriend. I worked for 22 hours in just 2 days to help their family build a wall of sandbags around 4 or 5 feet tall completely around their house. It was a lot of work, but I also had fun. I was very fortunate that my family lives up on the hill so we did not have as much stress as in town, and I also gained about 5 lbs of muscle just over those 2 weeks of sandbagging so that was good!
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