TimberlineFlood.com

We believe it is official now that sandbagging is completed!  Yesterday’s Code Red brought out a significant number of volunteers to help lay more sandbags to shore up the south side leak.  If anything else develops, we will announce it but at this time it appears that Timberline is protected to 40′ and that the water level will not exceed 38′ (latest projection is 37.5′).

Everyone that helped needs to get some much needed rest.

The city of Fargo indicatated an 11am start time.  Meet at 4641 Timberline Drive.

We just learned that the City wants us to sandbag to 40′ in some low areas starting at Rory Kilands to Craig Dresser’s house (there is also a spot by Terry Stroh’s we need to sandbag).  We don’t have any students to help this time, so all volunteers that can make it this morning will be greatly appreciated (dress warm!).  Meet behind Craig Dresser’s house (4641 Timberline Drive) when you come (we will meet in his garage initially until sandbagging starts).  THANKS!

The east drain is still leaking and Strata is putting in a clay dike that goes south-north to cut off the portion of the parkland west of the drain.  This means that we will most likely have to sandbag the low areas east of the south-north clay dike (which comes in to about Ralph/Michelle Erickson’s house.  The city is measuring elevations on the south side to determine what areas need sandbags (it appears only a couple of yards are at 38′).  Roger is checking now with the City to see what will be needed and we will make an announcement once we learn more from the City (Roger is checking with Dave Helland to see if we have to sandbag at all – Dave isn’t available right now).

Updates will follow.

With the help of hundreds of students, which we are very thankful for, we were able to get all of the sandbagging completed around 11:30 am today.  The only task remaining is to tie in the clay dikes to the sandbag dikes which Strata has been hired to do (they should have this completed today).

We now just have to sit and watch the water rise.  Thanks again to all of the volunteers that helped this year – we really couldn’t do this without your help!  Also, the food this year was outstanding so a very big thanks to the people that donated their time and resources to providing food to our hundreds of sandbaggers.

We had a lot of volunteers today which resulted in a significant amount of ground covered in a single day.  It is estimated that we had between 400-500 volunteers!

We have about 3 hours left to sandbag.  We will be meeting at 10 am on Thursday at the middle cul de sac to finish sandbagging tomorrow.  It will be a very good feeling to have this completed!

P.S.  Thank you to all of the home owners who consented to allowing sandbagging on their property – it helped tremendously to have to sandbag only 1-2 feet versus 3-5 feet.  For those who refused to consent resulting in thousands of more sandbags to lay, all we can say is that next year we do not believe everyone will be so tolerant of such selfishness.

We have just learned that the “big bags” will not be used in Timberline which means we will have to sandbag the entire east side of Timberline to 40′.  The good news is that we will only have to sandbag up to 1-2 feet in most of the places.  The bad news is that we will still need to lay about 40,000 sandbags which is about 16 semi-truck loads.  In addition to helping with this volume of sandbags, we will need a lot of volunteers to get into people’s backyards.  Get all of the volunteers you can and if everything goes well we should be able to be finished sandbagging by Thursday (promise by Roger :-)!

We are meeting at 8 am this Wednesday at the Timberline north cul de sac.  Please try to park in the Fox Run neighborhood if you are driving in because of the large number of trucks that will be coming into Timberline.  See you there!

The City of Fargo has posted the following March 16th Sandbag Schedule which includes Timberline:

Sandbag Delivery Schedule

March 16: Convoys are on schedule to deliver semi-trailer loads of sandbags to designated locations starting this morning, Tuesday, March 16. Delivery locations include:

• Oak Creek
• Copperfield Court
• Meadow Creek
• Silver Leaf
• Southwood
• Oak Grove
• Belmont
• 15th Ave. N. to 35th Ave. N.
• Timberline

On Monday, March 15 volunteers filled 110,000 sandbags and convoys delivered 86 truckloads of sandbags to neighborhoods. Volunteers have now filled a total of 850,000 sandbags at sandbag central. We anticipate reaching our goal of 1-million sandbags on Wednesday, March 17.

The Timberline Flood Meeting went well and below is a summary:

1.  Preparation of Property.  The residents along the dike are preparing their property for sandbags by removing snow.  If you need help removing snow, let Roger or Shannon know and arrangements can be made.

2.  Large Sandbags.  Some larger sandbags prepared by the National Guard may be used (see www.bigbagsusa.com for examples).  However, we still have to place a significant number of sandbags along the east side of Timberline.

3.  Sandbag Delivery Schedule.  Timberline is scheduled to receive sandbags Tuesday evening.  See March 16th Sandbag Schedule.

4.  Start Sandbagging.  Sandbagging will start on Wednesday at 8 am.  All sandbag volunteers should meet at Timberline’s north cul de sac at 8 am this Wednesday where sandbagging will start.

We look forward to all volunteers that can make it Wednesday morning!  Things should move fast if we have enough volunteers.  Updates will be posted as received.

The map drawn by the City of Fargo merely shows the general location of the sandbag dike to help everyone determine where they should remove snow.  Dave Helland from the City will be coming out late on Sunday afternoon (March 13th) to help mark where the sandbag dike should be located.  It should be noted that there are two main location issues when building a sandbag dike:

1.  Base.  We need to have enough area to build a broad base if we have to build to 44′.  Keep in mind that the base of the dike needs to be twice as wide as the height of the dike (e.g. if the height of the dike is 5′ then the base needs to be 10′).

2.  Height of Dike.  To help reduce the amount of sandbags we have to use, it is important to locate the dike at the highest possible elevation on the property.  This helps not only with the amount of time/man-hours/bags needed, but it also significantly can reduce the damage to your property because of the reduced traffic and weight of sandbags.  This will require some people to remove panels from their fence but you should wait until Dave Helland marks off the location of the sandbag dike.

More information will be posted about the sandbag dike as it is learned.

Below is an update received this afternoon from Dave Helland basically stating:

1.  Clay Dikes.  Clay dikes may start to go in this Sunday;

2.  Consent Form.  Everyone along the sandbag and clay dikes need to sign the Consent Form.

3.  Remove Snow.  Everyone along the dike should remove snow soon (see Timberline Flood Protection Map).

We have a scanned color copy of the City’s current Timberline Flood Protection Map (1.7 Mb) which shows where the dike will be comprised of clay, sandbags or Heskos.  A link to this map will be in the links section on the right column for future access.