2 million sandbags, make that 3 million

[nodak89]

www.inforum.com/event/article/id/234981/

Damn north-flowing river.

Routine surgeries at my hospital have been cancelled. We are closed to taking new patient admissions from other institutions. Quite the week for me to be the pediatric hospital service doc. The river is expected to crest in 2-3 days.

Nevada Hoya, can we send a few billion gallons to you in Las Vegas?

[TBird41]

Three goals is a lot, but is it really fair to call it a flood?

(Link goes to article with the Title "Taranto nets hat trick, leads Force" and I couldn't help myself)



Hopefully all the accented fooooolks are safe, but I'm pretty confident they'll be alright, since they have a lot of experience fighting Red River Flooding.

[Nevada Hoya]

Mar 23, 2009 14:43:17 GMT -5 nodak89 said:

www.inforum.com/event/article/id/234981/

Damn north-flowing river.

Routine surgeries at my hospital have been cancelled. We are closed to taking new patient admissions from other institutions. Quite the week for me to be the pediatric hospital service doc. The river is expected to crest in 2-3 days.

Nevada Hoya, can we send a few billion gallons to you in Las Vegas?

Sorry to hear this, Nodak. Our prayers are with you and the citizens of the Dakotas.

You can send the water via FedEx. We will deposit in Lake Mead.

[nodak89]

Up to 3 million sandbags and a river crest of 42 feet (or potentially 43 feet) tomorrow or the next day.

Since Monday we have been whittling down our inpatient numbers from 420 to 180 last night. Those 180 were evacuated overnight.

ER and urgent care still open and the 86-bed hospital across town is running.

A few neighborhoods have mandatory evacuations. We got my neighborhood dike to 43-44 ft yesterday.

Thanks for the prayers.

[quickplay]

how are floods measured? does the 43-44 ft mean how much wider it will get?

[nodak89]

the crest is measured in height of water above the river bed. If the dikes fail, we are looking at the river spreading about 5-6 miles wide.

www.wday.com/tv/?page=video&vid=29_viewfromthesky

based on maximum crest, the forecast tool shows it like this.
tinyurl.com/dxepqw

[Nevada Hoya]

They had a piece on the NoDak State bball team that played in the NCAAs filling up sand bags. The situation looked pretty bad. I pray that the sandbagging did its job.

[Bando]

Continue to be safe, nodak.

[kchoya]

Mar 27, 2009 13:16:45 GMT -5 quickplay said:

how are floods measured? does the 43-44 ft mean how much wider it will get?

It's funny how some parts of the country are totally oblivious to the specifics of certain unfortunate conditions (not meant in a derogatory manner at all). I've never dealt with hurricanes and only know that category 5 is worse that category 1. However, having grown up through the great flood of 1993, I can only imagine how bad this would be in the winter.

Also, a difference between a crest of 43 feet versus 44 feet may not seem like a lot, but when you're talking about really low lying and/or flat terrain, and the dikes around the river, that foot could make ther difference in a few miles in terms of how far the waters spread.

[nodak89]

I think we've got it beat!

The water is about 38 feet, which is the level of permanent protection.

Mrs Nodak and the kids are finally back in town. The second crest in a few weeks whould be only 37 ft.

Whew. Thanks for the thoughts and prayers.

[Nevada Hoya]

That is indeed good news, Nodak. Mabuhay!