Plains Blizzard Rebuilds Drifts, Strands Travelers, Cuts Power

A blizzard shut down much of the northern Plains on Sunday with blinding windblown snow and drifts up to 20 feet high, stranding travelers and making life miserable for volunteers sandbagging flood-threatened towns.

Hundreds of miles of highways were closed in Wyoming, the Dakotas, Nebraska and the eastern edge of Montana. Thousands were without electricity.

The blowing snow rebuilt drifts that had begun melting after a winter of record snowfall.

“My mailbox is probably 30 yards away. At times I can’t see it,” said Chad Klinske, who lives about a mile outside Grafton, N.D. “My drifts that were down to 4 or 5 feet are now 12 feet.”

With the electricity off, Klinske had to borrow a generator to run a small space heater and run the sump pump keeping water out of his basement.

“Right now, I’m walling off the living room with cushions from the couch, to try to reduce the area I’ve got to heat,” he said.

Snowbound day-shift employees couldn’t get to work at the Elim Nursing Home in Fargo. The overnight crew put out a call for help from people in the neighborhood, and 15 to 20 volunteers showed up, administrative assistant Louise Swanson said.

“They’re making beds. They’re helping feed the residents and just doing whatever they can to help,” Swanson said.

North Dakota Gov. Edward T. Schafer asked President Clinton to declare the state a disaster area. “We’ve got the whole state virtually paralyzed,” he said.

Across the state line in west-central Minnesota, dikes failed throughout much of Breckenridge during the night, letting the Red River pour as much as 3 feet deep into streets. Most of the downtown was knee-deep in water and snow-encrusted ice; parked cars were frozen in place.

Hundreds of people had been evacuated in Breckenridge because of the flood caused by melting snow from previous storms, and others were stranded by the blizzard, Police Chief Dennis Milbrandt said. Temperatures were in the 20s and the wind chill was below zero.

“We’ve had officers going door-to-door with chest waders,” Milbrandt said. “We thought about boats, but there’s so much ice and wind, we’re concerned about that. We don’t want to put anybody else in danger.”

In Montevideo, Minn., 100 miles southeast of Breckenridge, waves driven by 40 mph wind crashed against dikes along the bloated Minnesota River, splashing volunteers as they piled sandbags and coating clothing and beards with ice.

At Watertown, S.D., Lake Kampeska, fed by the swollen Big Sioux River, had reached a record 42 1/2 inches above the full mark and residents of a 30-block area were urged to evacuate.

Most highways were closed in North Dakota, including all 600 miles of Interstates 94 and 29.