Minot, the Atlantis of the Plains
North Dakota National Guard members monitor flood water along the Broadway flood levee as they remain on alert with one-ton sandbags June 24. The one-ton sandbags are at the ready to patch any breaches in the earthen levee should they occur. The flood levee work being done along Broadway in Minot is in hopes of keeping the main arterial road open that connects north Minot to south Minot. DoD photo by Senior Master Sgt. David H. Lipp
You gotta laugh, or you’d cry.
Minot is under water. As I write this piece, the water level at Minot 4W, the Boy Scout bridge, is at 24.12 feet. The record was 23 feet and the projection is for the Souris River to rise to 27.5 feet.
This data needs to be converted to be compared to the gauge at Broadway in Minot. That gauge is measured in feet above sea level, and it is currently showing the Souris River at 1,560.13 feet. That is two feet above the previous record and three feet below the projected crest.
Converting the Minot 4W gauge to feet above sea level gives us a current value of 1,569.87 feet with a projected crest of 1,573.25 feet. There’s ten feet of difference in the two crests. From the 4W gauge to the Broadway gauge, the projected crest drops ten feet. Both the projections and the gauge readings have varied during the flood due to changes in data and the physical condition of the gauge, so take all of this with a grain of salt.
The North Dakota National Guard has activated about 800 troops for duty in Minot and Ward County. They are doing just about everything:
levee patrols, two Quick Reaction Forces (QRFs), Traffic Control Points, TrapBag and Hesco installation, dike building, security patrols, evacuation support, air boat evacuation, rescue support team and have four humvee ambulances and medical personnel responding, and a fire truck loaded on a tractor-trailer for high-water emergency response. Two NDNG UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters are operating…
Minot Air Force Base is assisting the Guard and civilian authorities with about 150 airmen and two UH-1 Huey helicopters.
Table of contents for Minot flood 2011
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NDNG-Minot
This entry was posted on Friday, June 24th, 2011 at 8:52 pm and is filed under Disasters, Military, Humanitarian Assistance, Military, Original writing, Original writing, Reporting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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