Red River Flooding: Residents Prepare for the Worst
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: We turn now from California's energy crunch to a potential natural disaster in the Midwest. The Red River Valley is a flood plain today. And there's a desperate race to keep its rising waters out of cities, towns and farms in Minnesota and the Dakotas. Our Jeff Flock is in Crookston, Minnesota, which is bracing for a flood surge -- Jeff.</s>JEFF FLOCK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning to you, Carol. Indeed, Crookston, Minnesota, one of the danger zones -- and right now, they have had some good news, because yesterday, at about this time, they had ice out here in the Red Lake River. This isn't the Red, but the Red Lake, which empties on in a little farther down -- a lot of ice. And it caused an ice jam here and backed the water up. And it was another 5, 6, maybe 7 feet beyond where it is right now. I've got the mayor of Crookston with me: Don Osborne this morning. You're pretty happy this morning, you got rid of that ice.</s>DON OSBORNE, CROOKSTON, MINNESOTA, MAYOR: Yes, it's definitely a peaceful sign.</s>FLOCK: Now, you've got levees all along here that have had some water up on them for a while. You got some real worry about your levees.</s>OSBORNE: Yes. As a matter of fact, where we're standing here right now, there was water here earlier in the week. The levees, yes, they're very old. They were done by lay people back after the '50 flood. There's an awful lot of sand veins, a lot of slipperage. And right at this point, as the water goes down, my fear is that the one that could still give way.</s>FLOCK: If that happens, then, even don't have to top a levee. Water doesn't have to come up any farther than it is right now and you could have trouble.</s>OSBORNE: Yes, I think it would be just as bad as the Chicago fire.</s>FLOCK: If that happened.</s>OSBORNE: Yes.</s>FLOCK: Wow.</s>OSBORNE: And we'd lose an addition to the city.</s>FLOCK: Yes. Now, I want to ask Rick (ph) if he can run over -- I'll tell you, if we can get over here -- walk over here with me, Mayor, if you can -- you get a sense of this. And we're walking right through our light here. But if you can see back in there, this is some of the ice that you had. Rick, if you can go ahead and run back in there and see if you can see that. That ice was all over here yesterday.</s>OSBORNE: Yes. It was -- well, it was up on the far side of the bridge there. There's still a lot of ice there. And you can see the marks with the ice yet. So...</s>FLOCK: Have you got any more coming down?</s>OSBORNE: No. What they've talked about out of coming out of Thief River, that should be deteriorated before it gets here. A lot of it will go along the sides, out of the channel.</s>FLOCK: So hopefully you're past the ice problem.</s>OSBORNE: Yes, I definitely...</s>FLOCK: And before we get away, the last problem is, potentially, you're going to get some -- you're going to get some rain here later in the week.</s>OSBORNE: The forecast says Wednesday and Thursday. Hopefully, that is not as serious as they originally forecast. They did change it some this morning, so I hope it's -- they keep it that way.</s>FLOCK: All right, Mayor Osborne, I appreciate it very much.</s>OSBORNE: Thank you.</s>FLOCK: Thank you, sir. We're going to check back with you next hour -- perhaps be live next hour down in the command post, which is in the basement of the police station here as they prepare to fight this flood, hope it doesn't get any worse. That's the latest from Crookston -- back to you, folks.</s>LIN: Thanks, Jeff. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com