North Dakota Army National Guard Responds to Bismarck Flooding
March 26, 2009

Chief Warrant Ron Doll/ND Army National Guard:

The ice jams, what they do is, the ice starts to break up  and floats downriver and as it hits a choke point it starts piling up, and what it does it just holds the water back. The water still goes underneath it and around it; it looks like turning the faucet half-open.  It piles up the water behind.  

Obviously when it piles up, the water it starts flooding overland.  Our mission is to support civilian agencies that are here, and the Guard, and everything that needs to be done to help alleviate the issue.  From hauling people out to the river, equipment out to the river, doing whatever we can.   The helicopter works well for something like that.  We have haunted out several experts to look at that   recon the whole river basically gets a scenario of what is really going on. And a helicopter works really well for that.   He can fly slow. You got good visibility and so we do what do all those types of missions. 

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