Fargo Mayor Dennis Walaker cautiously expressed hope that the river would stay below 44 feet _ the limit of the reinforced dikes. Walaker said there was not enough time to build the levees any higher.
Fargo escaped devastation from flooding in 1997, when Grand Forks was ravaged by a historic flood 70 miles to the north. This year, the river has been swollen by heavier-than-average winter snows, combined with an early freeze last fall that locked a lot of moisture into the soil. The threat has been made worse by spring rains.
“I think the river is mad that she lost the last time,” said engineer Mike Buerkley, managing a smile through his dark stubble as he tossed sandbags onto his pickup truck after working 29 straight hours.
Some 1,700 National Guard troops helped reinforce the dikes and conduct patrols for leaks. Police restricted traffic to allow trucks laden with sandbags, backhoes and other heavy equipment to get through.
Authorities said they were keeping about 300,000 of the 3 million sandbags they had Friday in warm buildings for use as needed. Sandbags that are already frozen when piled onto a dike do not fit together snugly.
But the freezing temperatures actually helped stave off worse flooding; officials said the river was rising more slowly because the freezing temperatures prevented snow from melting.
The White House said it was monitoring flooding in North Dakota and Minnesota, and President Barack Obama has dispatched the acting head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to the region. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Obama has personally spoken with the governors of both states and with Fargo’s mayor.
The president called North Dakota Sen. Kent Conrad on his cell phone during a news conference in Bismarck on flooding problems there and in Fargo. “If there’s anything more that we can do, we will do it,” Obama said after Conrad held the phone up to a microphone.
Authorities in Fargo and across the river in Moorhead _ a city of about 30,000 people _ expanded evacuations Friday across several blocks. About 2,600 households in Moorhead _ about a third of the city _ were asked to leave their homes. Hundreds more in Fargo were asked to evacuate.
Some residents were roused from their sleep around 2 a.m. Friday and told to leave after authorities found a leak in a dike. They expected to be able to patch it securely.
More than 100 inmates were taken from the county jail in Fargo to other lockups in the region, and Moorhead planned to evacuate the police station because of encroaching floodwaters. Sen. Byron Dorgan said Northwest Airlines was sending two jetliners to move hospital patients to safer areas.
The effort to fortify flood-prone neighborhoods took place around the city, with officials building a contingency dike system as a second line of defense should the river breach riverside neighborhoods. But some residents were left between the two sets of dikes.
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