Ice blasted to put end to Bismarck flood

Thousands of south Bismarck and rural residents have fled their homes, warned by city officials that the water was coming.

River water that's crept up storm drainage ditches and seeped into southside neighborhoods since Sunday represents history. It's the first time Bismarck has had a spring flood since 1952, which was while the Garrison Dam was being built 60 miles upstream to prevent such disasters.

To help alleviate the current crisis, Garrison Dam was shut off completely on Tuesday, the first time that has happened since it was built.

The demolition crew that blasted the ice was assisted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, National Guard and Coast Guard.

They did not blow up the ice jam itself; instead, 80 holes were drilled and blasted in the 2-foot-thick sheet ice holding back the jam just off Fox Island.

Greg Wilz, North Dakota homeland security director, said crews in Blackhawk helicopters were assessing whether the blast was truly successful. They were also dropping salt to weaken the ice and planning for a second set of explosions if need be.

"Our goal is to keep it going all the way to the (South Dakota) border.

City, county and state officials spent much of the last two days correcting misconceptions, including about the characteristics of the ice jams themselves

"They're not like beaver dams," Burleigh County Commissioner Jim Peluso said, unlike the image many people had who asked him why the jam was not being blasted sooner.

Early Wednesday, the Weather Channel, citing the National Weather Service, ran a crawler across its screen reporting erroneously that another large ice jam several miles north of the city had let loose a surge of water heading for the city, creating panic.

The information was false and exasperated city and county officials said they'd been unable to trace the origin of that report.

They're hoping that ice jam and others north of the city stay in place while the backed up water in the Fox Island area dissipates.

"Right now, those jams are our friends," Wilz said.

With the Garrison Dam flow shut down, Wilz said, it is other flows into the Missouri above Bismarck that are still adding to the worries.

"The biggest problem is what is coming from the Knife (River)," he said.

The area of Bismarck that is flooding or threatened was all built on former flood plain after the Garrison Dam was completed in 1954. Until then, very little except the Wachter cattle feed lot existed there. Now it contains some of the city's most expensive homes, golf course, zoo, hotels and the Kirkwood Mall and its surrounding business district.

Mandan, which sits a few feet higher on the west side of the river, has also taken precautions, putting in place half of a flood wall structure that slips into place at the west end of Memorial Highway. If the worst happens, the other half can be set in place quickly.

Mandan has more often been flooded by the Heart River, which drains into the Missouri south of the city. But Mayor Tim Helbling said Wednesday all indications were that the Heart was not going to be a problem this year. It, too, has been dammed up since the 1950s, with structures at Dickinson and Heart Butte, near Glen Ullin.