Residents of the Red River Valley can breathe a little easier today. The Red River has crested. Fargo-Moorhead got through the flood nearly unscathed. The effort to keep the water back was, again, very successful.
But breathing easier should be a temporary condition. The flood of 2010, after all, will go down in the books as the seventh-highest crest in recorded history. The fact that the flood ranks among the top 10 floods in modern times should be a reminder that the region remains at risk, no matter how successful this year's flood fight was.
The metro area's flood-fighting success is linked directly to more than a decade of preparing for the next "big one." Flood protections put in place since 1997 have been so effective that a flood of major proportions - this year's crest just short of 37 feet, for example - can be managed. The cities have built protections to a higher crest, having learned what the river can do from 2009's record river level just short of 41 feet.
So 37 feet didn't feel like a threat. The cities never cranked up the level of emergency or urgency that characterized last year's campaign. Disruptions to the normal routines of city life were minimal - hardly noticeable.
Yet, 37 feet is a major flood by the historic definition. The reasons Fargo-Moorhead could carry on with some sense of normalcy this spring are the years of smart preparation, data collection and analysis, levee work and extraordinary multilevel cooperation among every government, agency and volunteer group in the region. The flood fight in the F-M metro has become a finely tuned machine, which is run by a cadre of dedicated, experienced elected officials and professional staffs. An expanding body of science and engineering fuels flood-fighting campaigns, which are so successful that anything less would be a surprise.
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That being said, there is no room for complacency. The river at Fargo has crested near or significantly above 37 feet five times since 1997. The danger has not diminished, even as F-M has put in place major high-water protections. Any one of a dozen factors, including a rapid melt or/and a 3-inch rain, could mean disaster. The city came close to that circumstance in 2009.
The worst is over for 2010. That's the good news. The bad news is permanent flood protection from the "big one" - a diversion channel - is years away.
Forum editorials represent the opinion of Forum management and the newspaper's Editorial Board.
