red river

Sandbag Central

illconsidered — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 06:19:27 +0000

Sandbag Central

Guest post from het, provider of the weekly feature "Another week of GW News"

Sandbag Central

(source: Boston.com)
When I see scenes like the 'sandbag central' Fargo stadium --- thousands of people shovelling sand, making and piling sandbags, fighting together for their city --- my heart swells. It is the community of shared adversity.

CBC-TV had a camera crew wandering around the stadium interviewing people and they zeroed in on one little blonde haired girl of 7 or 8 years. "Why are you doing this?" asked the interviewer. "For my city, for my family," said the little girl. But the thing that struck me was that all the time she was being questioned, she never stopped working. When it came down to it, she had her priorities straight.

This has been one of my unspoken, background hopes in the long twilight struggle to deal with global warming --- that people would find community when the reality of the threat became unavoidable.

There are many problems with the idea. The first is perception. A Keeling Curve is not like the Red River rising. The danger is not immediately obvious. Another is the time factor. Our climate today is a result of the emissions, the energy balance of the past 50 to 100 years. The danger is not clear until it is too late.

And if, in the absence of enlightened leadership, some technological wizard should craft a geoengineering miracle to solve our climate crisis, we would still face the ecological crunch. We have exceeded the planet's carrying capacity and will have to rectify that account as well.

These are difficult, if not intractable problems; still...sandbag central is inspiring.

>EOF

illconsidered Wed, 04/01/2009 - 02:19

Red River flooding

illconsidered — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 09:13:12 +0000

Red River flooding

This was passed on to me for posting by het, just as a human interest angle to this current event

My brother David lives 50 feet from the Red River north
of Winnipeg about half way between Lockport and the perimeter
highway. You may have heard about the flooding across
the river at St. Andrews. Below I have copied an email received
from him last night.

> I've been getting calls and emails about the Red River and flooding, so I thought
> I would write and let you know.
>
> On monday, after work, we had the most amazing experience. The river ice was groaning
> and moaning and cracking, breaking up due to the current's pressure. The sounds were
> eerie and amazing. It seemed that the whole of the ice was moving, then plugging up,
> pushing up and crashing down, then moving as a unit again. Going to bed that night,
> we were still hearing the sounds. When we awoke tues morning, we had open water.
>
> But the ice blockage had only moved downstream to the next curve in the river and
> got plugged up again. This is the blockage that you heard about on TV,radio and inet.
> The water level began to rise and by last evening was up higher than we had ever seen it.
> It was up and covering the first plateau on our bank (it needed to rise another 20 feet
> before it would get near our house). Our neighbours across the river have a much more
> gradual slope to their bank and are built much lower and closer to the water. One of
> the neighbours was building clay dikes all evening and the next day, one had his pump
> house flooded up to the rafters.
>
> A mile and a half north, houses on both sides of the river built on lower lots were
> flooded. River Road was covered with river water.
>
> This morning today the ice broke up and moved further north to Lockport, our river
> level fell three feet by noon hour. But the higher water level just moved north too.
> Houses and businesses along the west side of the river around Lockport are now flooded.
> I suspect this will repeat itself all the way north to Lake Winnipeg.
>
> So, the long and short of it is..... we are well and dry.
>

illconsidered Fri, 03/27/2009 - 05:13

An up close and personal look at flooding in the Red River Valley

gregladen — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 13:42:22 +0000

An up close and personal look at flooding in the Red River Valley

In 1997, the sandbagging was not enough to save Grand Forks. The river rose higher than it had been since 1826. Downtown Grand Forks was destroyed by explosions and fire that added on to the damage caused by the water. ... The local TV stations carried stories of cattle stranded in flowing water, unable to reach higher ground. Some cattle were frozen standing in place as the floodwaters froze at night.

From A Simple Assignment . Go read it!

gregladen Mon, 03/23/2009 - 09:42