Rising waters in the midwestern state of North Dakota on Friday forced hundreds of people to head for higher ground as the state braced for its worst floods in recorded history.
Officials warned of increasing danger as cracks in some levees around the town of Fargo forced people to evacuate overnight and more mandatory evacuation orders were prepared in case of further emergencies.
Police before dawn ordered residents of one section of town to head west due to a levy breech, local news reported. It was unclear how many people were affected by the order.
”Due to the immediate threat of rising flood water, the City of Fargo is ordering a mandatory evacuation,” the daily Fargo Forum said, adding residents of that area ”should immediately proceed west of the neighbourhood”.
Earlier, forecasters boosted their predictions of the waters’ height, now expected to reach 13,1m by Saturday, up two feet from earlier estimates, and several hundred people have left their homes so far.
”The river is expected to behave in ways never previously observed,” the weather service said in a bulletin late on Thursday.
”Conditions on the Red River at Fargo have grown increasingly dangerous over the past 24 hours,” it said.
”The river is currently approaching record levels and showing no sign of slowing,” it said, warning that flows upstream of the city have ”produced unprecedented conditions.”
Residents and volunteers hustled to reinforce the city’s defenses as swelling floodwaters lapped sandbag dikes in Fargo, a city of about 92 000 and namesake of the 1996 mystery-comedy movie starring Frances McDormand.
Fargo was most at risk because it has not developed the extensive flood protection systems of upriver cities like Grand Forks and Winnipeg, Canada.
Thousands of volunteers, many in the city’s Fargodome arena, filled 2,5-million sandbags to build miles of dikes as tall as a four-storey building to hold back the rising river, which was at nearly 11,9m on Thursday.
But just as the exhausting bag-by-bag work seemed close to completion, forecasters raised their predicted crest level by a possible metre due to fresh rain and snow in recent days.
”We do not want to give up yet. We want to go down swinging if we go down,” said Fargo Mayor Dennis Walaker.
”I want to make sure we commit every resource and every volunteer to do what we can do,” he said. ”Then, if we fail, we’ll fully understand what’s happened.”
Residents trapped across the state were rescued by boat and helicopter due to the increasingly menacing Red River, which runs along the North Dakota-Minnesota border and flows northward to Canada.
In 1997 massive flooding from the river sent waters here to 12m high and forced tens of thousands of people from their homes — an event likely to be eclipsed by this weekend.
It was already six metres above flood levels in Fargo and was forecast to rise several more before cresting on Saturday.
In 1897 the Red River reached a record 12,2m in Fargo.
President Barack Obama issued a federal disaster declaration for 34 counties and two Native American reservations as nearly the entire state remained under a major flood warning.
More snow was forecast to fall on the Red River valley in the coming days and rain could worsen flood conditions next week. — Sapa-AFP