With the threat of yet more rain looming, Minot was preparing Saturday for the Souris River cascading already passed level unprecedented and extend a path of destruction that had severely damaged thousands of homes and threatened many others.
City officials hoped the River peak from the Saturday night in some feet of 8 1/2 beyond the stage of the great flood and remain there for several days, exhausting the dikes of the city up to the limit and overwhelming some of them. Forecasters said there were at least one possibility even of further storms in the next few days.
"An event of rain now change everything." "It is the most frightening," said Mayor Curt Zimbelman.
After a step higher on Friday, officials estimate at least 2,500 homes had been flooded and predicted that number would increase to 4,500 when the River crests. At least two schools, a nursing home and hundreds of businesses were also threatened, said Zimbelman.
More than one quarter of the residents of Minot 40,000 evacuated earlier this week, any belongings waiting to keep cars, trucks and trailers of packaging.
Fueled by heavy rains upstream and versions of prey that have accelerated in recent days, the grown Souris spent a record of 130 years Friday and kept going. The River was more than 5 feet above the stage of the great flood of the Friday afternoon.
Fell the Ridge predicted a foot based on modelling by the national weather service, but it was little consolation in Minot, where Governor Jack Dalrymple said frantic efforts to maintain the flood at Bay soon would lead to a difficult challenge of recovery.
"The stress of this incident is going to build very quickly," he said.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency promised assistance to flood victims in the counties of Burleigh and Ward, including Minot and Bismarck, the capital of the State, which has been damaged by the Missouri River floods. Sens. Kent Conrad and John Hoeven and representative Rick Berg had pushed to aid in a call to the Secretary of national security Janet Napolitano and said they hoped that it would be it extended to other counties ravaged by floods.
As had done it the last two days, emergency officials focused on the protection of water and sewer systems to avoid the need for more evacuations. They relied on the water system, but a little less on the sewage treatment plant. Had been canteens as high as possible.
Zimbelman said water go briefly through a storm sewer began to erode a dyke Centre before was controlled.
Also of concern was the bridge of Broadway, a key route from North to South. Raised dykes that protects the approach to the North but Corps of engineers Lieutenant Colonel Kendall Bergmann said is touch and go. The work of dam also protected the nearby Minot State University campus.
Hoeven said that a helicopter over the Souris Valley flight shown damage in small towns. Estimated that more than 5,000 homes in the Valley would eventually be damage by water, the Minot and Burlington, where officials left sandbagging Thursday included. The Corps of engineers of the army was leading an effort to build dikes of emergencies in gilded, a small town 20 km downstream from Minot, prior to the Souris there are symbols on Tuesday.
In Burlington, Cindy Bader deputy auditor estimated Friday that more than half of the 1,000 residents of the city had left to escape the growing Souris River.
City of Burlington, school and police and fire seemed safe, but some houses in the evacuation zone had water up to the first floor and upper.
In a neighborhood, the tops of two traffic signals attracted just above the water brackish, Brown, reached just below the eaves of two nearby houses.
Wayne Walter, a driver of Councillor and truck, city of Burlington for a snack food company, said that residents were stunned by the rapid rise in the River. Only a trickle of water had slipped on levees overnight Thursday, but in the morning "everything was gone," he said.
The National Guard had 870 members activated for the crisis. Minot is known as home to an Air Force base, which oversees 150 missiles Minuteman III in underground silos scattered launch more than 8,500 square kilometres in the Northwest of North Dakota.
Col. S.L. Davis, Commander of the wing 91 missile, said that there were some "localized flooding" in a handful of missiles due to wet spring and summer sites. But he said the silos are designed to handle a little water with security and protection measures were taken in some places similar to what is done in preparation for the second round of the spring thaw.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released four boats to patrol the flooded neighborhoods and respond to 911 calls. No one was injured. The evacuation area was empty except for emergency officials and some geese that remaron in 5 feet of water from washing the streets.
George Moe, 63, whose house was on a block of the Bank, returned briefly on Friday to pick up some clues. MOE said that the only thing left in his house was the mounted head of an antelope by his wife, who died three years ago.
MOE worried home lived in four decades and the store where he worked as a mechanic; He was taking water and that he was not sure that would have a work after the flood.
"I hate to see something go to hell after 40 years", said. "There you can do much."
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Dale Wetzel associated press writer in Burlington contributed to this report.
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