Red River Crest Leaves U.S., Surges Toward Canada Canadian Army Toiling To Save Farms In Path Of 25-Mile-Wide Floodwaters

The crest of the Red River left Minnesota and North Dakota behind on Monday, sliding a 30-mile-long slick of sewage and farm runoff toward Canadian towns and farms braced for trouble all the way to Winnipeg, the capital of Manitoba.

“I’ve a warning to those of you north of us: Watch out, folks. It’s going to get you,” Tom Mulhern of the Grand Forks (N.D.) United Way said last week.

But no warning was necessary; Canadians have been preparing for weeks.

Seven small towns - such as Letellier, St. Jean Baptiste and Morris - are ringed with dikes being raised several feet with clay and sandbags.

The crest is expected to reach Winnipeg this weekend and take two days to pass, with the city counting on its floodway to protect its 660,000 residents.

But between now and the end of the week, crucial battles will be waged on more than 3,000 farms in the path of a river that has swelled to 25 miles wide in Canada, said Joe Czech of the Manitoba Emergency Management Organization. Already, 17,000 Canadians have been evacuated from the area south of Winnipeg.

At the U.S.-Canadian border, the tiny town of Pembina - the oldest in North Dakota - said a relieved farewell to the flood, its dikes intact after days of struggling to bolster them.

“I wouldn’t call it a victory. I wouldn’t know what you would call it. We lost some and we won some. The town itself, I think, we won,” said Tim Wilwand, 38, a farmer and store owner who helped save the community which is the hub for 640 people. His farm, however, was under water.

Forewarned by Minnesota’s and North Dakota’s disastrous encounter with the Red River, Canada has enlisted its army to fight the flood. More than 6,000 troops from the Canadian military are stationed in southern Manitoba, the largest deployment since the Korean War and about 10 percent of the nation’s military, said Maj. Doug Martin, public affairs officer with the Canadian army.

On Sunday and Monday, Master Cpl. Patric Menard of the 1st Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry in Calgary, Alberta, commanded 23 of his soldiers to save Ray and Jeanette Sabourin’s farm.

Menard’s group has been in Manitoba for 12 days, and he estimates its 600 troops have saved more than 50 farmhouses by toiling 16 to 18 hours a day, seven days a week.

“These guys have been working their hearts out on very little sleep,” Menard said. “Each soldier has had only two hours’ training on dike building, but most of the locals think of us as experts.”

Ray Sabourin is grateful for the help. “Our dike was holding all right, but she started to spring a few leaks,” he said.

“The south wind is supposed to get up to 60 cliks (kilometers per hour) tomorrow. These guys are beautiful; we’d get flooded out for sure without them.”