F
fishhuntcutwood
Guest
Friday night I get a call asking me if I can get to ND for the floods. Gotta put the dog in the kennel and kiss the girlfriend goodbye, but yeah, I'm there.
And now I'm here. I'm in Grand Forks, which is directly north of Fargo on the ND/MN border. Things are well and it looks like (for now....) catastrophe has been averted. The river has crested at Fargo and the levees and dikes held. The crest runs down river, which on the Red River is actually north....towards Grand Forks, where I'm at.
We've got cold weather here, which is helping keep alot of the moisture frozen and allowing the river to flow and drain. We're getting hammered with a snow storm Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday, but it's supposed to stay cold until the weekend, so if the river can flow, the snow will sit until the weekend and when it starts to thaw a bit, hopefully the river will be down enough to absorb it.
They sent us out here because it's already a mess, but if the dikes fail/had failed it would've been Katrina-scale disaster. ND is flat, that's no secret, and if the river is allowed to flood, it can flood 100 miles outside the banks! So far, that's been averted. Keep your fingers crossed.
Basically, we've got five helos out here, and I'm running the maintenance for them. I don't get to fly and do the "cool" stuff much anymore, but I like doing what I do, which is managing the maintenance, inspections and ready status of five helos, only one of which came from my unit. So I'm handed four other helos from other units and they're all mine now! May not sound exciting, but I like the maintenance management side of my job. It's constant problem solving and I like being involved in the "big picture" of things.
Initially we wanted to load our 30' trailer onto a C130 and fly it up here. The trailer is equipped with tools, oil, parts, etc and is meant to be a portable maintenance base. Well come to find out, the trailer is too low to get up the ramp onto the C130. So I offload what I can, and put it onto our 1 ton stake bed truck and load the whole truck onto the 130. Looked like Beverly Hillbillies, but we got it on there. Here's the pics of the loading process, and my "view" on the flight up here...pretty much tucked in hehind the brake light and rear wheels!
Probably won't have much in the way of cool flood pics, as I'm not really here to fly, but figured I'd let y'all know where I'm at and what I'm doing.
And now I'm here. I'm in Grand Forks, which is directly north of Fargo on the ND/MN border. Things are well and it looks like (for now....) catastrophe has been averted. The river has crested at Fargo and the levees and dikes held. The crest runs down river, which on the Red River is actually north....towards Grand Forks, where I'm at.
We've got cold weather here, which is helping keep alot of the moisture frozen and allowing the river to flow and drain. We're getting hammered with a snow storm Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday, but it's supposed to stay cold until the weekend, so if the river can flow, the snow will sit until the weekend and when it starts to thaw a bit, hopefully the river will be down enough to absorb it.
They sent us out here because it's already a mess, but if the dikes fail/had failed it would've been Katrina-scale disaster. ND is flat, that's no secret, and if the river is allowed to flood, it can flood 100 miles outside the banks! So far, that's been averted. Keep your fingers crossed.
Basically, we've got five helos out here, and I'm running the maintenance for them. I don't get to fly and do the "cool" stuff much anymore, but I like doing what I do, which is managing the maintenance, inspections and ready status of five helos, only one of which came from my unit. So I'm handed four other helos from other units and they're all mine now! May not sound exciting, but I like the maintenance management side of my job. It's constant problem solving and I like being involved in the "big picture" of things.
Initially we wanted to load our 30' trailer onto a C130 and fly it up here. The trailer is equipped with tools, oil, parts, etc and is meant to be a portable maintenance base. Well come to find out, the trailer is too low to get up the ramp onto the C130. So I offload what I can, and put it onto our 1 ton stake bed truck and load the whole truck onto the 130. Looked like Beverly Hillbillies, but we got it on there. Here's the pics of the loading process, and my "view" on the flight up here...pretty much tucked in hehind the brake light and rear wheels!
Probably won't have much in the way of cool flood pics, as I'm not really here to fly, but figured I'd let y'all know where I'm at and what I'm doing.
