Volunteers prepare for really big flood in North Dakota

Disaster News Network: Rising water along the Cannonball River in southwest North Dakota forced the Saturday evacuation of seven families in Mott, a small town in Hettinger County. The evacuations came as hundreds of volunteers filled sandbags in a number of different communities in the Red River Basin. The families in Mott were last evacuated in 1997 when record flooding hit the region.

Flooding this week in the Red River Basin could rival flooding from 1997, according to the National Weather Service. Minor flooding in some areas has already begun and sand bagging operations have been started in Fargo, N.D. and Moorhead, MN, as community leaders are preparing for the potentially high waters.

An Advance Emergency Response Team of disaster response specialists is being sent from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) office in Denver Monday to work with state and local officials.

North Dakota's Gov. John Hoeven has requested that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers provide assistance in preparation for the expected flooding in Devils Lake, Red River of the North and Souris River basins…..

Red River Basin map, public domain, then modified by either Jengod at en.wikipedia or MECU, Wikimedia Commons, used here under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License