Flooding Soaks Upper Plains Hundreds Forced To Evacuate As Minnesota, Red Rivers Rise

Volunteers from up to 50 miles away stacked sandbags during a steady rain Saturday, trying to protect the town’s sole source of clean water from a rising flood, while scores of families along the swollen Minnesota River left for higher ground.

The southwestern Minnesota town sits at the confluence of the Chippewa and Minnesota rivers, water normally about 100 yards across. On Saturday, it was a mile wide, flooding two of the three main highways.

More than 150 families have been evacuated from low-lying neighborhoods here and along 40 miles of the swollen Minnesota River, upstream to the dam at Big Stone Lake.

Water was expected to pour over the dam in the next two days, leaving authorities powerless to control the flow of the river. A few miles downriver, the 250 residents of Odessa were warned that they might have to evacuate - and it was grim news in Montevideo.

“This is terrible. The flood of 1993 was a cakewalk compared to this,” Don Patton said as he piled sandbags.

The water rose steadily, going from a record 22 feet late Friday to 23 feet - 10 feet higher than normal - by noon Saturday. It’s expected to crest Tuesday at between 24 and 25 feet.

To the northwest, 100 miles away, the surging Red River forced authorities in Breckenridge to call for evacuations.

“We’re losing it. We’re losing everything,” said Jack Thompson, emergency management director for Breckenridge and Wilkin County.

There were fears that some of the city’s dikes could give way.

“I don’t think we’ve got a choice,” Thompson said. “We just can’t take the chance of leaving people in harm’s way.”

The region got twice as much snow as normal this past winter, and all that snow has been quickly melting as daytime temperatures over the past several days reached the 50s and low 60s.

On top of all that, more snow fell Saturday in Wyoming, Montana and the western Dakotas, with 10 inches overnight at Dickinson, N.D., and blizzard warnings were posted for much of both Dakotas.

Sections of Interstate highways were closed in North and South Dakota, and in Wyoming, where drifts were up to 5 feet high.

In northern Wisconsin, the flooded Bad River forced some members of the Bad River Indian Reservation to move into the hotel of the tribal casino.

“It’s up to my back yard,” said one of the evacuees, Don Kolobziejski.