BISMARCK, N.D. — Demolition crews blasted chunks of ice near a huge ice jam in the Missouri River on Wednesday in a bid to open a channel, like pulling out a giant plug to drain a flood threatening the city.
“We are cautiously optimistic,” Bismarck Mayor John Warford said after explosives were detonated on about 500 feet of ice south of the jam. He said water appeared to be moving.
Water backing up behind the dam of car-size ice blocks already had forced the evacuation of about 1,700 people from low-lying areas in North Dakota’s capital city.
On the eastern side of the state, volunteers continued stacking sandbags to protect Fargo from the rising Red River, as the city prepared to distribute evacuation route information.
On the Missouri, crews from Advanced Explosives Demolition, with help from the National Guard, Army Corps of Engineers and Coast Guard, drilled holes in the ice to detonate claylike explosives.
Roger Kay, an Army Corps of Engineers hydraulic engineer, said ice downstream from that jam appeared to be melting and weakening, meaning less resistance once the jam is broken loose.
A second ice jam about 10 miles upstream of Bismarck was also a concern, holding back a growing reservoir.
About 200 miles east of Bismarck, officials also called for more sandbagging volunteers in Fargo, and its cross-river neighbor, Moorhead, Minn. Fargo officials planned to start distributing evacuation-route information today.
