Fargo/Moorhead Flood of 2009

On Friday for work I went with the guys from work over to Moorhead to help in whatever way I could with the sandbagging efforts. I took some pictures of the water but not as many as I could have, I was busy most of the time. We spent the morning sandbagging houses and the afternoon helping box up computers and office equpiment at the Moorhead law enforcement center.

This picutre was from the car on the way over to Moorhead. Somewhere near Mahnomen. The roads were horrible, some were closed and the water was a little too close to the roads...

This was one house on the road we helped sandbag... I'll try to explain how high the water was... I was standing on the road looking at the house. There are sandbags around the house but water around the sandbags already. The water on the other side of this dirt levee was almost the same height as the levee.

This was another house on the road, the water was already up behind the house to the sandbags.

Here I was standing next to a tree, next to a house and on a pile of sandbags. The two trees to the left should not even be close to the water...

I couldn't read the measurements on the sticks in the yard but this was from the same spot. Just beside this tree was a house. These people had been having the water rise for a while and were pretty well prepared but still needed help on Friday.

I wish this picture had turned out better. This house had a walk out basement that would have overlooked the river. The sandbags were about 9 feet hight from the cement slab along the basement of the house. The water, as you can tell, is almost flush with the sandbags.

This was an attempt to get a picture of the water as we were leaving, I took it out the window of the Tahoe I road over in... the dirt levee was up to at least the middle of the window of the vehicle and the water over the levee was getting close to the top. The 'snow' in the background is actually just resting on the water. Looks can be deceiving but it is all water underneath.

This was about a half of a parking lot away from the law enforcement center. I'm not sure what the black tube was filled with... I was too scared to touch it... didn't want the water to start gushing over the side! But the snow again is sitting on top of water... the garage to the right has water already up to mid-garage level. These black tubes ran between the road and the houses. So there were about 5 or 6 houses on the water side that had already been flooded. People were moving out their belongings and packing them in vehicles and trailers.

This was another view of the black tube...

The house to the left looks like it just has snow up along the fence line but it is actually

(again) water with snow on top...

the trees in the yard should be in a yard not in the water!

It was amazing how much water was really in the yards and around the houses.

My prayers are with the families who are affected by the flood...

Cheesey picture of me before we left with my new gas-station sunglasses....

I was tired and ready to get home at this point but not as tired as the other volunteers who had been there for days and will be there tomorrow and the weeks to come helping clean up the area.