FORT PIERRE, S.D. — Sitting atop a 6-foot wall of white sandbags hastily stacked to protect his home from the rising Missouri River, 82-year-old Helmet Reuer doesn’t buy the official explanation that heavy rains caused a sudden flood threat.
Along with his neighbors in an upscale section of Fort Pierre, Reuer said he thinks the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers blew it, waiting until it was too late to begin releasing water through the Missouri’s six dams to give itself a cushion against potential flooding.
“It’s human error,” Reuer said as rising water neared his house.
Corps officials insist otherwise. They say they were in good shape to handle spring rain and melt from a massive Rocky Mountain snowpack until unexpectedly heavy rains of 8 inches or more fell last month in eastern Montana and Wyoming and western North Dakota and South Dakota.
“This is just a massive rain that fell in the exact wrong place at the exact wrong time,” said Eric Stasch, operations manager at Oahe Dam, the huge structure that controls the Missouri’s flow just above Fort Pierre.
Crews have worked all week to build up levee protections and say they expect to have 2 feet to spare. But Gov. Dennis Daugaard advised people in neighborhoods nearest the river to leave in case levees don’t hold, and hundreds have done so after a hectic week of moving possessions and adding sandbags around their houses.
They face weeks out of their homes until the river begins cresting in mid-June, with high water expected to linger for up to two months.
Jody Farhat, chief of Missouri River Basin water management in the corps’ Omaha District, said the agency made no mistakes and has managed releases in accordance with its manual.
