Safety First and Second
March 28, 2009
Fargo, North Dakota

Paul Machajewski, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers: 

What we have going on here is, within the last two or three days the residents, working with the city, constructed a primary emergency levee of sandbags running behind the neighbor???s houses here.

And based on the rise in the water, and where we are at right now, and how long it is going to be there; the city engineers decided to go with a secondary protection levee behind it just in case something would happen.

Just in case the primary levee, the sandbag levee, would fail we would have a secondary line of defense.

When you build with the sandbags there is less (edit stammers) impact on the area, you go between the houses easier, the buildings,  you don???t tear up people???s yards with heavy equipment trucks and so the city and the residents decided they wanted to go with a sandbag levee to begin with???

Our concern is how long the water is going to be up. We are not going to relax until the water is down where it is supposed to be.   So it's going to be weeks before we are real comfortable with what is happening.

We are just making sure everyone is safe. 

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