2009 "CF to MB Flooding" Watch

[The Bread Guy]

Note HESCO's attainment of PR mileage for its products (check below initial news items)

CBC.ca:  "The Canadian military is on standby to help in Manitoba's battle against the impending Red River flood.  Members of the Canadian forces came to the province's aid in 1997, lending a hand in sandbagging and building dikes against the rising tide. As they left the city, they were cheered in a heroes' parade down Portage Avenue.  "We're exploring what assistance can be required, if needed, through our joint emergency preparedness program," federal Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan said Thursday in Ottawa.  "And there's, of course, our disaster assistance program, (an) after-the-fact way of assisting with funding, should events arise."....

Winnipeg Free Press:  "The Canadian military is prepared to help Winnipeg battle the rising Red once again.  Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan said today the military is "on standby ready to provide resources if need be."  During the 1997 flood, the Canadian military sent more than 8,500 personnel to Manitoba to help with everything from sandbagging and diking to evacuations and medical assistance. It was the largest deployment of Canadian troops since the Korean War.  Van Loan said the federal government is in constant contact with Manitoba emergency officials and is ready with any kind of help that might be needed.  "There’s not a need for a declaration of a natural disaster in advance or anything like that that you see in the United States on television," he said.  Ottawa is exploring what assistance can be provided through emergency preparedness programs, he said, adding that disaster financial assistance will kick in automatically as per the existing agreement.  Federal disaster money becomes available once damage costs exceed about $1.2 million in Manitoba. Disaster costs include evacuation operations, restoring public works and infrastructure and replacing or repairing basic, essential personal property of individuals, small businesses and farmsteads....."


First, the HESCO  company news release:  "HESCO Bastion USA technical representatives and National Guard personnel are working around the clock installing HESCO Concertainer Flood Barriers as the Red River continues to rise, threatening dozens of communities in and around the City of Fargo.  Installed in one-tenth of the time it takes to construct traditional sandbag levees, HESCO Bastion USA's innovative Concertainer barriers are an efficient, effective, and proven tool in emergency flood fighting campaigns. In fact, every structure protected by HESCO in the Louisiana region survived Hurricane Katrina. In addition to protecting people and property from the ravages of hurricanes and floodwaters, HESCO Concertainer technology is utilized by coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan to safeguard personnel and military assets from enemy mortar rounds, small-arms fire, and IED's...."

...followed by some pretty high-grade third-party testimonial:  "While deployed in Iraq, the towering Hesco barriers that ringed the base became a familiar sight to Army Spc. Ryan L. Karsky.  These large, modular steel baskets, lined with a fine, mesh material, held compacted desert sand, gravel and chunks of concrete. They served as an effective shield against hostile fire and shrapnel.  Now back home in North Dakota, Karsky, a member of the North Dakota Army National Guard’s 817th Engineer Company, has found a different use for the trusty barriers. He was among about 50 Guard soldiers and airmen constructing miles of Hesco barriers along low-lying parts of Fargo, which is dealing with major flooding ...."

Air Force Staff Sgt. Jamie Frankl, of the 219th Security Forces Squadron, directs traffic so flood-fighting dump trucks can pass through intersections during the morning rush hour in Fargo, N.D., March 24, 2009. Dikes are being constructed to hold back the rising water of the Red River. U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Master Sgt. David H. Lipp 

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[geo]

Hmmm.... the year after the Manitoba floods.... we had the ice storm in the east.

Please - no ice storms next winter - Of that, I can do without!

 

[cbt arms sub tech]

Probably going to be a wait in see thing....Looks like a real mess in Fargo!

 

[Hotspur]

Is the geography significantly different in Manitoba or something that makes officials confident they shouldn't be deploying all resources to the area immediately?  I don't know the area or the history so I'm curious.

The Americans seem to have emptied the prisons, called in all their military assets in the area and basically enlisted 100% of the able bodied public to prepare for this flood.  That seems like extraordinary measures to be taken while we remain in a wait and see mode.  How long until we expect the crest to reach populated areas in manitoba, not just Winnipeg itself?

 

[geo]

Hotspur,
We can put our troops on standby but, deploying our troops to an area requires a request from the government of Manitoba.... and to my knowledge, the province has not made a formal request.

In the US, the State has different resources - the National Guard is a tool in the State's arsenal.  Canadian provinces do not have a similar resource.

 

[Rifleman62]

It's called Dudd's Ditch. Possibly ND should get some ObamaMoney (TM) to build floodways around Fargo and Grand Forks.

Populated towns South of Winnipeg have ring dikes that can be closed.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Red River Floodway is an artificial flood control waterway in Western Canada, first used in 1969. It is a 47 km (29 mile) long channel which, during flood periods, diverts part of the Red River's flow around the city of Winnipeg, Manitoba to the east and discharges it back into the Red River below the dam at Lockport. It can carry floodwater at a rate of up to 2,550 cubic metres (91,700 cubic feet) per second. It was built partly in response to the disastrous 1950 Red River flood.

The Floodway was pejoratively nicknamed "Duff's Ditch" by opponents of its construction, after Premier Duff Roblin, whose Progressive Conservative government initiated the project. It was completed in time and under budget. Subsequent events have vindicated the plan. Used over 20 times in the 37 years from its completion to 2006, the Floodway has saved an estimated $10 billion (CAD) in flood damages. The "Duff's Ditch" term is still used affectionately.

Construction of the Floodway started on October 6, 1962 and finished in March 1968, was a major undertaking with 76.5 million cubic metres (2.75 billion cubic feet) of earth excavated—more than what was moved for the Suez Canal[1]. At the time, the project was the second largest earth-moving project in the world – next only to the construction of the Panama Canal[2].

The Floodway protection system includes more than just the channel to the east of the city, but also the dikes along the river through Winnipeg and the "Brunkild Z-dike" extending to the west from the south of the city. The Brunkild Dike was built in 1997 during the "Flood of the Century" when the volume of water exceeded the safe capacity of the Floodway and water lapped within inches of the city's dikes. Primarily as a result of the Floodway, the city suffered little flood damage.

http://www.floodwayauthority.mb.ca/projectintro.html

In 1997, Manitoba experienced a major flood - the "Flood of the Century." This flood forced the evacuations of communities in the Red River Valley and came close to reaching the floodway's capacity and threatening the protection of Winnipeg. In the end, the Red River Floodway did protect Winnipeg and saved the city from the devastation that was experienced by our American neighbours in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

In the aftermath of the 1997 "Flood of the Century," the International Joint Commission (IJC) reviewed flood protection measures and found that under flow conditions similar to those experienced in 1997, the risk of failure of Winnipeg's flood protection infrastructure would be high. As a result, the IJC recommended that to ensure public safety, the city, province and Canadian government focus immediate action on designing and implementing measures to protect Winnipeg.

 

[newmet]

Hotspur;

I am currently here in Winnipeg on my BOQ training and when watching the news they are predicting only 70-100 homes will be affected by the flooding of the Red River.  After the flooding in 1997 owners moved to be further away from the Red River.  Some homes here are already flooded in the basements; however, this is due to storm drains not clearing quickly enough or getting clogged with ice jams.
On a side note, my husband was deployed here in 1997 and then he was deployed to the ice storm in Ontario the following year, so I am with geo, we can do without the winter storm too :S

 

[GAP]

Since 1997 Manitoba spent around 500 million building ring dikes around all the effected towns, refused to provide disaster repairs from the 97 flood unless the farm buildings and yards were raised above the flood levels, etc. etc.

North Dakota has not done any of these things, so they are going to be hit hard. Manitoba will be inconvenienced, but does not face anywhere near the devastation Grand Forks is going to be hit with.

Duff's Ditch has been expanded just this last winter, but the bottleneck is still the St. Andrews Locks on the Red River just north of Winnipeg....if it jams up with ice, which it generally does, it backs everything up and floods the surrounding area.

 

[Old Sweat]

Gap

What is the situation with the Souris-Assinniboine watershed?

Did not the St Andrews' ice jam just clear itself yesterday? That doesn't mean it won't reform, of course.

 

[Shec]

Since 1997 Manitoba spent around 500 million building ring dikes around all the effected towns, refused to provide disaster repairs from the 97 flood unless the farm buildings and yards were raised above the flood levels, etc. etc.

North Dakota has not done any of these things, so they are going to be hit hard. Manitoba will be inconvenienced, but does not face anywhere near the devastation Grand Forks is going to be hit with.

Duff's Ditch has been expanded just this last winter, but the bottleneck is still the St. Andrews Locks on the Red River just north of Winnipeg....if it jams up with ice, which it generally does, it backs everything up and floods the surrounding area.

Glad to hear the floodway has been expanded.  In '74  Winnipeg militia units were called out to fight the flooding that was occuring as a result of the bottleneck at the floodway's intake control station around St. Norbert.  2VP was there too. 

The intake gate was barely able to handle the raging torrent.  We were putting up dikes against a roaring backdrop that resembled a brown Niagara Falls.  My contribution to the effort was driving a deuce-and-a-half shuttling sandbags from the filling point to the dike. 

Quite the river that Red !!

 

[GAP]

Gap

What is the situation with the Souris-Assinniboine watershed?

Did not the St Andrews' ice jam just clear itself yesterday? That doesn't mean it won't reform, of course.

The Assinniboine runs......guess where...into the Red, smack in the middle of Winnipeg. It's not just the Red that's creating problems, the floodway (Duff's Ditch) pretty much takes care of that, but inside Winnipeg the Assiniboine empties into the Red.

The St. Andrews icejam was cleared yesterday only to jam up again at the Lockport locks.

 

[Old Sweat]

Gap,

That's why I asked about the Assinniboine. There is a floodway in the Portage area that diverts water from it north into the lake, but I don't think it can handle all the excess water.

Thinking out loud, BGen Bob Meating (sp?), who commanded the CF response to the 1997 flood, mentioned in a briefing I sat in on that when he deployed, he asked for a copy of the after action report on the 1950 flood. No one in the Manitoba government had thought to look at it, so his IO dug out a copy from the city library. I suspect somebody in Canada.com is tracking the situation very closely. In the bad old days the CF was not allowed to (supposed to) contingency plan or to offer assistance without being asked.This, I submit, was based on penny pinching, rather than constitutional, issues.

A very negative note re the 1997 response was the claim by an academic from the University of Ottawa that it was a mistake to deploy the CF on flood control duties. This was the same person, who without any serious research, had written a paper for the Somalia inquiry claiming that the CF was made up of people recruited from the social misfit and criminal classes of society who only had joined to stay out of jail and/or to avoid starvation. She claimed in 1997 that the troops deployed to the dikes would spend their time looting abandoned properties, not fighting the flood. She hs not been heard from for more than a decade.

 

[GAP]

There is a floodway in the Portage area that diverts water from it north into the lake, but I don't think it can handle all the excess water

There's 50 miles of farmland between Portage la Prairie and winnipeg that is snow covered prior to the recent storm (which added 20cm ) that has to melt and runoff into the Assiniboine.

 

[yak]

I used to live in Headingley, just west of Wpg.  I was in the third house up from the riverbank (the Assiniboine), and in '97 I was surprised that the river stayed in its banks.

There was a massive earthen dike south of the city, maybe that kept some of the water out of the Assiniboine and into the spillway or the Red. 

From what I've seen, the Red seems to reach its critical point much sooner than the Assinboine.

 

[JesseWZ]

I was out sandbagging yesterday at my friends very low lying home on the Red about 2 miles North of Lockport and I can attest that the ice had jammed right behind her home and we were in serious trouble. The water rose very, very fast and it was a mad panick to find sandbags, filling crews, driving crews and dike constructors.
Eventually the goodwill of people resulted in over 30 people coming out to volunteer and help us bag, tag and build.

 

[cbt arms sub tech]

Does anyone have any current news from the present situation as of yet?

 

[daftandbarmy]

Does anyone have any current news from the present situation as of yet?

It looks like they're doing staff checks on the availability of reservists JUST IN CASE we need to support response and recovery efforts.

 

[JesseWZ]

www.winnipegfreepress.com is updated pretty frequently, they're looking for volunteers still in St. Andrews (at the Firehalld Donald and Main Street) and in St. Clements, you can call 482-3300.

As far as the ROTP side goes, we got an urgent email making sure all our contact information is up to date in case they decide to yank us spaghetti generals and send us to stop leaks in various dikes.

 

[daftandbarmy]

As far as the ROTP side goes, we got an urgent email making sure all our contact information is up to date in case they decide to yank us spaghetti generals and send us to stop leaks in various dikes.

I hope that they treat OCdts better now than when I was in training. If so, they will give you sandbags to stop leaks, and not plug you into the gaps head first  ;D

 

[JesseWZ]

You and me both.