Officials in Fargo, North Dakota, announced yesterday that they are searching for sites at which sandbags can be stored to prepare for the spring flooding season. According to Fargo Enterprise Director Bruce Grubb, the city is currently calling for volunteers to fill the sandbags. Fargo plans to fill one million sandbags over the course of two weeks, starting on March 1. While the city has some storage sites in mind already, they are still looking for others.
The National Weather Service is predicting that the Red River has an 86 percent chance of producing major flooding in the Fargo-Moorhead area this spring. Conditions now are very similar to the conditions that preceded last year's Red River flooding.
Last spring, the Red River threatened Fargo-Moorhead twice. The first time, the river crested at a record 40.82 feet, and the second time it crested at 34 feet. Volunteers fought back feverishly, stacking about six million sandbags to hold the water back. Last year, though, the city had about eight days of warning, and volunteers scrambled to fill and place the first three million bags before the river crested. This year, the city hopes to have at least a million sandbags ready to place immediately if weather conditions suddenly change -- in case, for example, a few warm days were to cause a rapid snow melt. The city plans to be ready for flood levels up to 40 feet.
"Let's err on the side of caution," said Grubb. "Let's try to get a jump start on this thing...We'd like to have a million sandbags prepared in those first several weeks in heated storage so they don't freeze, ready for dispatch and then continue making sandbags based on what the engineers tell us we need."
In addition to calling for volunteers to fill sandbags, Fargo officials are considering the possibility of using a sand-tube making machine made by Conveyor Application Systems. The new machine was inspired by the heroic volunteer efforts to fill and stack sandbags in Fargo last spring. The machine carries ten tons of sand and can make and place tubes that are the equivalent of 120 sandbags per minute. In five and a half hours, the machine can produce a stack of sand tubes that is 1,000 feet long, forming a three-foot tall barrier. The machine was adapted from machines used to make soil tubes in the Pacific Northwest, to filter water running into streams after forest fires or to restore wetlands. Tim Bertschi, of the Fargo office of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said his office was evaluating the machine.
"This is something new," Bertschi commented. "We are hit with new products all the time. We do take a look at almost anything."
Fargo-Moorhead is considering, as well, the possibility of using water-filled tubes in some areas, because last year, the city managed to protect a seven-block long area near the Clay County Courthouse using water-filled tubes.