North Dakota's largest city in danger of being flooded by Red River

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• published: 21 Jul 2015
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1. Wide of sandbag dike to keep rising river at bay, river, houses, 2. Pull out from river to sandbag dike, nearby homes 3. Wide shot of volunteers making sandbags by house 4. Various of sandbags being filled 5. Close up of sandbags being filled 6. Wide shot of large dumper truck delivering sand 7. Mid of sand being dumped out 8. SOUNDBITE: (English) John Boulger, Fargo Resident: "I moved here right before the flood we had here in 1997, that was 39 and a half (inches), which was a historical record at the time, we made it then with a dike back here, we are going to make it again. They are telling us it is going to it 41 to 42 feet, we are good to 43 feet, we have never had a flood that high in recorded time before. We think we can do it." 9. Wide shot of sandbag volunteers 10. Various shots of volunteers closing up sandbags 11. SOUNDBITE: (English) John Boulger, Fargo Resident: "This is a glacial valley, it's flat, we don't have contour to our land here, so what we have to do is build these dikes. This particular dike that our neighbourhood is building is probably 3/4 of a mile to a mile long, we have put down more than half a million sandbags and probably more coming." 12. Wide shot of volunteers filling sandbags 13. SOUNDBITE: (English) John Boulger, Fargo Resident: "If we are successful with our dike, we stay dry, if we are not, there's lots of houses that are going to be taken down, but there is no point in everybody going down, so I don't mind that we are now trapped between two dikes." 14. Close up of sandbags being moved 15. Medium shot of line of volunteers moving sandbags 16. Wide shot of forklift picking up sandbags 17. Medium shot of forklift moving sandbags 18. SOUNDBITE: (English) Nate Medhus, Volunteer: "There is a lot of us out here moving the sandbags, trying to get them right up to the dikes and there is more people forming the lines to actually make the dikes. The water is coming up to the dikes fairly rapidly, the crest is supposed to be in about 48 hours, so we are running out of time quickly. But it has been great to see all the people coming out, people from around the country have been showing up." 19. Various shots of volunteers forming a line to move sandbags into place STORYLINE: North Dakota's largest city, Fargo, moved towards the brink of potentially disastrous flooding on Thursday, with earlier optimism fading as officials predicted the Red River would reach a record-high crest of 41 feet (12.5 metres) by the weekend. Thousands of volunteers who have been piling sandbags for days scrambled to add another foot to Fargo's dike protection, and official briefings lost the jokes and quips that had broken the tension earlier in the week. Instead, Thursday's meeting opened with a prayer. The city of 92-thousand unveiled a contingency evacuation plan on Thursday afternoon. The sandbag-making operation churned on as furiously as ever, and fresh bags were piled up by volunteers who endured temperatures below 20 degrees in the race to sandbag the river to a height of 43 feet (13.10 metres). Leon Schlafmann, Fargo's emergency management director, said he was confident they would succeed by the end of Thursday. As the struggle continued in Fargo, the threat in the state capital of Bismarck was receding, after explosives were used to attack an ice jam on the Missouri River south of the city of 59-thousand people. At least 1,700 people had been evacuated from low-lying areas of Bismarck before the river level began to fall. Crews were also rescuing stranded residents in rural areas south of Fargo. As the river crept perilously close to houses built along the Red River, residents held out hope that the final sandbagging effort would work. You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/512784394d386b255536481fca8ffe60 Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork