Flooding Hits South Heart on KMOT-TV North Dakota's NBC News Leader

Flooding Hits South Heart | Video

Andrew Keller

3/18/2009

As the temperature climbs above freezing, the snow has been slowly melting. Twelve miles west of Dickinson, in the town South Heart, the water is pooling up.

"Abundance of water, and of course, that area is along the creek bottom down there, and it is a low area, and they always anticipate some problems," says Gary Kostelecky, the Stark County Emergency Manager.

Kostelecky says South Heart has plenty of problems right now. From the water flowing over the road to large bodies of water having nowhere to go, it has many residents concerned. One of those residents lives just up the river.

"I was just kind of thinking the other way hoping for some water, now all of a sudden, you know, sometimes you have to be careful what you wish for," says Jerry Perdaems, a South Heart resident.

Perdaems says the Heart River began overflowing yesterday afternoon, spilling over into his yard. The water continued to creep closer and closer to his home until about 5:00 am this morning, when it receded. In his 40 years of living here, he`s never seen the river this close.

"We`ll just see. There`s still a lot of snow out there in those areas, and if it warms up considerably in the next day or two and we get some precipitation, we`re just going to have to be prepared, I guess," says Perdaems.

And if this happens?

"Those people, like Mr. Perdaems, probably will be looking at putting in some sandbags or bales of hay or whatever to build a temporary dike to keep the water away," says Kostelecky.

Perdaems hopes he will maintain the beachfront he has and the water will continue to flow and slowly recede. Kostelecky says Patterson Lake has risen six feet in 12 hours. He says the water is about one foot from flowing over the gate.

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