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American Morning

Red River Is on the Rise

Aired April 10, 2001 - 11:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: We begin in Grand Forks, North Dakota, scene of a memorable flood and fire just four years ago this month and, once again, it's the Red River which is on the rise, and Grand Forks and other communities in that region are taking no chances this time.

Joining us from Grand Forks, North Dakota, is our Jeff Flock -- Jeff, good morning.

JEFF FLOCK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right. Good morning to you, Daryn. You're right. They're taking no chances, even though the projected crest is no where near even the top of the levies that exist already. They're still building even higher.

Perhaps you can see, as we speak, the trucks rolling us past here out along the Red River. They are putting the dike in place to protect this community from flood waters, which we are now, we've just confirmed with the folks at Grand Forks, 44 feet.

Now these numbers may not mean too awfully much to you, but -- they're all sort of relative. Just to give you a perspective of where we stand, if we're at 43 feet now, the great flood of 1997 was 54.3 roughly. So we've still got a long way to go, but the thing that scares everybody is that they're not making any crest predictions -- any new crest predictions because they don't know about the -- about the rain.

The other thing that, of course, is the -- is the factor in all of this is what happened in 1997. Let's give you a picture. We want to be careful with our pictures of 1997, so -- make sure that we're clear with it. Not this year, but 1997 was just a horrible tragedy in Grand Forks.

They -- after sandbagging and building levies for weeks in a valiant effort to hold back the Red River, in what was described then as a hundred-year flood, snuck around one of the levies, began to break through. Eventually, the whole levee system gave out, and the entire downtown was completely flooded.

And then, as you may know, after that, fire spread through the downtown, and there was tremendous devastation. That is part of the mentality that drives what you see going on right now.

Again, to make it clear, the levy system already was about 50 feet. They're bringing it up now to about 54 feet, which, you know, if we're standing right here, you can see we're standing roughly on the ground on top of the levy where it typically would be, and there you go. It's about three, four, you know, four-and-a-half feet of additional clay and dirt, and I --

Rick, I don't know if you can see this, but if you'd come over here -- this is not just dirt. This is -- this is actual clay, which, you know, has some additional ability to both hold back the water and to stick together, and that's -- that's the kind of material that they're putting on here, as we said, another additional three-and-a- half, perhaps four feet of it, in hopes of holding back the Red River.

We will, of course, continue to watch this. This diking procedure will continue throughout this day, and then they're going to move on and protect as much of this town as they can.

That's the latest from here. Back to you.

KAGAN: Jeff, help me with a little bit of math here. You know, it was just four years ago, they were talking about the flood of century, and here we are four years later, and it seems like a similar situation. Any forecasters there have any explanations as to why they're in this difficult situation so soon?

FLOCK: Well, yeah, and I'm -- I hope I heard you correctly with the trucks going by, but the thing is that we're not in that situation yet. I mean, as we said, there's a lot of fear and concern about that and, you know, you can see -- and if Bill's able to get back out to the Red, you know, you can see how high this river is. It's -- you know, it's serious stuff.

But, at this point, we don't have any significant flooding. Nobody's been driven out of their homes here in Grand Forks. You know, we've got some farmsteads that are flooded, but, at this point and even with the crests that have been projected earlier, we're are not looking at anything like it was in '97, but having been through that, these folks don't want to take any chances -- Daryn.

KAGAN: Jeff Flock in Grand Forks. Thank you so much -- Kyra.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: All right. More than 100 miles south of Grand Forks, other towns along the Red River, such as Wahpeton, North Dakota, and Breckenridge, Minnesota, are shoring up their dikes.

And joining us on the phone now is the mayor of Breckenridge, Cliff Barth.

Mayor, thanks for joining us.

CLIFF BARTH, BRECKENRIDGE MAYOR: You're welcome.

PHILLIPS: So is it there raining right now?

BARTH: No, it's not.

PHILLIPS: OK. That's good news. What's the river level right now where you are?

BARTH: Right now, the river level is 16.58. It has dropped a little bit since yesterday.

PHILLIPS: Have you ever been in a situation like this before, or is this pretty much the worst you've seen?

BARTH: No. In 1997 -- just listening to Grand Forks forecast up there and what they were talking about this morning, in 1997, we were devastated with a flood here, also. It almost flooded our entire city.

PHILLIPS: So you got it just as bad. So tell me how is the community coming together right now?

BARTH: They're coming together real good. You know, we have got on top of things here. We've got protection. We're supposed to have crest of 19.5. A crest -- or the elevation of our protection is going to be 22 feet. In 1997, the crest was 19.4. So you can see it's almost the same level of flooding.

PHILLIPS: How are you taking care of people like the elderly and other kind of folks that may be having a hard time with these types of conditions, Mayor?

BARTH: Well, we've had meetings with the elderly people and the -- you know, like the senior citizens and stuff like that and tried to assure them that we are protecting them as best we can, that we have confidence in what we're doing.

PHILLIPS: I know you have a lot of volunteers there pitching in, helping out. What type of other support are you getting?

BARTH: Well, first of all, the Corps of Engineers is spearheading all the protection that we're doing. They hired the contractors to come in. We've got the Red Cross, the Salvation Army. We've got -- the fire departments from surrounding areas have helped us out. It's just been tremendous all the support we're getting.

PHILLIPS: What about schools and businesses? How are they being effected right now?

BARTH: Right now, there's -- the schools and businesses are doing as usual. No problem.

PHILLIPS: Well, that's good to hear. Mayor Cliff Barth, thanks so much for joining us.

BARTH: You're welcome.

PHILLIPS: A lot of support coming your way.

KAGAN: Of course, the folks in that area keeping their eyes on the weather. Very important to them. Let's check in with Jill Brown and see what the latest is -- Jill.

JILL BROWN, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Good morning, guys.

We're looking at a radar here, and we'll see a band of rain to the south of that spot in Breckenridge about in here. Fargo, Grand Forks a little father north where you saw Jeff Flock.

The rain's that starting to show up here in South Dakota into Southern Minnesota will start working its way farther to the North over the next 12 to 24 hours. So We do think that there's more rain in the forecast, and so these river flood stages -- or not flood stages, actually, but the forecast stage will probably change somewhat.

Just double checked on the report that -- this is from yesterday morning about this time. So chances are we'll be getting an update very soon. And it is taking into account the next two days worth of rainfall that's in the forecast. However, as that rain comes in and we see exactly how much we do get, these will be updated accordingly.

So this is an initial forecast. Changes expected.

So Wahpeton, across the river from Breckenridge where we just talked to mayor, 10-foot flood stage. As he said, now it's about 16- 1/2 feet. It's already six-and-a-half feet above flood stage. By Friday, the peak is expected at 19 feet. That may change depending on how much rain we get.

Fargo expected to get up to 36, which is just an amazing amount over flood stage. East Grand Forks, 46, which is not as high as they did get in the last flood three to four years ago. Drayton, 40.2, forecast on Friday.

And, again, the rain that we do have coming in is expected to be heavy, heaviest on Wednesday, tapering off Thursday, a brief break on Friday, and then perhaps more showers in the forecast for Saturday.

But this is the storm of concern. As it heads into the northern plains, that will bring that more steady and heavy rain in across Minnesota and North Dakota and along the Red River valley.

Also, I want to mention that, along this front, we're expecting severe weather. So this is our second big story of the day. Look at this area. It's huge. From Pittsburgh to St. Louis, Kansas City back toward Oklahoma City and Dallas, you have the threat of severe thunderstorms.

That darker red area is a moderate-risk area. When we get that, typically, we're going to be looking for a few reports of tornadoes. It does not look like this is going to be a major tornadic outbreak, but there is that possibility this afternoon. We've had a few warnings here and there in Nebraska, Illinois, and Indiana so far this morning.

So we'll be updating you on that. Things will get worse this afternoon -- Daryn and Kyra, back to you.

KAGAN: Jill, thank you so much. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com