March 2009 - Posts
By Leo Juarez, NBC News Producer
OXBOW, N.D. – It took big, yellow earth movers to get across the floodwaters. But instead of moving dirt, they were ferrying volunteers to help sandbag the home of Robert and Bridgette Startz.
The couple's home in Oxbow, N.D. – just south of Fargo – was an island when we found it, and many of their neighbors had already been rescued via Coast Guard air boats from the rising Red River. But the Startzes and their three kids were staying put for now.
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| Scott Olson / Getty Images |
| Volunteers receive a lift to a sandbag filling point on Thursday in Oxbow, North Dakota. |
"Kind of like an Alamo," said Robert Startz. "The last stand."
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By Kevin Tibbles, NBC News Correspondent
MOORHEAD, Minn. – I’m standing on the banks of the Red River in Moorhead, Minn., looking across toward Fargo while police close down one of the bridges.
The rising waters are now lapping up against the top of the metal structure and it appears ready to go under. Down the way, a long freight train trundles across another bridge, which also appears to be in a precarious state.
Despite the fervent prayers of local residents, it's apparent today that a miracle is not on the way for these two communities and dozens of others across the plains. The Red River continues to rise into "uncharted territory," according to local officials.
While they used dynamite on Wednesday to break up ice floes blocking up water near Bismarck, N.D. to save that city, they are using sandbags here.
Now the river is expected to crest in Fargo at a record 41 feet – the high end of previous estimates – so floodwalls need to go even higher; but it is clear the volunteers helping to build them are beginning to feel the strain.
Local nursing homes are being evacuated of residents just in case, while the Red Cross opens shelters in other communities. The Red Cross says the fear and worry is starting to take it's a toll.
But still they come. From hundreds of miles away volunteers continue to arrive to spend hours filling sandbags or slogging through icy mud and cold to bolster the floodwalls.
All this, and the worst isn't even supposed to arrive until the weekend.
And what’s today’s goal? Another half million sandbags deployed.
By Erika Angulo, NBC News Researcher
ST. THOMAS, U.S. Virgin Islands – "Please buy something and help me keep my job," Sylvia Brown kept repeating to potential shoppers as they trickled into the Coral World Ocean Park gift store in St. Thomas on a recent morning.
The U.S. Virgin Islands’ resident has been helping customers at the Coki Point Beach aquarium’s souvenir store for more than 10 years. As the economy in the mainland worsens, she is seeing fewer shoppers.
"We keep waiting for things to get better," she said as she folded pastel-colored T-shirts at the nearly empty store, "but we haven’t had a real tourist season in two years." The store manager has cut everyone’s work hours to avoid cutting staff.
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| Courtesy of James Kizer |
| Salomon Bay Beach on St. John, one of the U.S. Virgin Islands. |
Brown is one of thousands of workers increasingly concerned about how the weak economy will affect their livelihood in this U.S. Territory surrounded by white, fine sand and turquoise water.
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