... that's how Minot Mayor Curt Zimbelman ended his press conference yesterday.
You may not have heard, but the face of Minot, ND is about to be changed for quite some time. At 12:57 pm today -- five hours before evacuations were scheduled, when water started overtopping the dikes -- the sirens in town blasted, signaling that it was time for approximately one third of Minot's population to undergo mandatory evacuation:
Nearly 500 North Dakota National Guard soldiers are in the town of 41,000 people to help the last stragglers in the affected area get out of harm's way. They are accompanying the roaring sirens with shouts of "All residents must evacuate!"
"We've never seen anything like what we're expecting," Minot Mayor Curt Zimbleman told ABC News. The mayor had warned residents previously today that the river could top the levees earlier than expected, and has been urging residents to leave potentially affected areas.
snip
Minot is expecting the worst flooding it has seen in nearly four decades, when severe flooding of the Souris River devastated the city in 1969. The same river reached 1,555.4 feet above sea level during that destructive flood time, and this time it could reach 1,563 feet.
This is the second time Minot residents have had to flee their homes. About 10,000 people were told to evacuate potentially affected areas earlier this month when the river climbed to 1,554 feet. They were eventually allowed to return, but were told to remain on high alert as heavy rain and the spring melt have swollen the river as it curves down from Canada.
Links and more below the orange squiggly thing.
Mid-Dakota Chapter of the Red Cross. Please, please, please, if you can, help out the Red Cross here, which has been phenomenal with their assistance.
Live stream for KXMC News (local CBS affiliate, which has been absolutely killing it during Flood Fight 2011; seriously, the men and women of KX will be winning some kind of journalistic award when all is said and done. They have been live 24 hours/ day since Monday.):
Stream videos at Ustream
KXMC's facebook page, with some amazing photos and anecdotes from viewers. KX has done a remarkable job integrating facebook into their coverage. You don't have to be a registered user of facebook to view the page.
National Weather Service Flood Prediction. It's ugly.
Ward County Flood Information
I'm currently in my hometown of Burlington, which is 8 miles west of Minot. Our population is a little over 1,500 when you consider outlying rural areas, and as of noon today, there were mandatory evacuations for around 1,000 of us (I am staying with my parents, and we are high and dry, well above even the worse projected flood crests).
Here in Burlington, our little community has been filling sandbags 24 hours/ day for days. I have spent most of the past few days evacuating friends and family in the area, and in between, I managed to spend some time at the city hall here filling sandbags. It was unreal how people worked together to fill the bags and get them down to the river where the men and women of the North Dakota National Guard have also been working around the clock, building up the dikes around the town.
After long, grueling days of work, I just got a little nap in. I will be updating this diary as I am able. I'll be around for a while. The NDSU Extension Center is being used as a shelter for pets, and I am planning on heading there in a bit to volunteer some time with the critters. So if you have questions and I don't respond right away, that's where I'll be.