Gore Carries Promises of U.S. Help to Flood Areas

With the freezing Red River cresting feet behind him, Vice President Al Gore dug his boots Friday into the damp earthen dikes protecting North Dakota’s largest city from the worst flooding in a century.

“It’s worse than I expected,” he said. “Looking at it from an airplane . . . really drives home what an extensive area has been hit by this.”

By Friday afternoon, the Red was already at its highest level in 150 years--more than 20 feet above flood stage--and swollen to twice its normal width.

Residents who had spent days feverishly pitching sandbags around their homes switched gears Friday, warily inspecting their more than 100 homemade dikes for signs of failing.

“It’s been a heroic effort to get all these preparations in place,” Gore said. “My main message here is very, very simple: You’re not in this alone. The entire United States of America stands with you.”

The vice president was accompanied by a thicket of senators, congressmen and federal officials.

President Clinton this week signed disaster declarations for North Dakota, South Dakota and 21 counties in Minnesota. The flood is the worst in a century, so “disaster relief also has to be unprecedented,” Gore said. Gore also visited flooded sites in South Dakota and Breckenridge, Minn.

Snowmelt-swollen rivers have been cresting across the prairie that forms the Minnesota-North Dakota boundary for nearly a week. A blizzard that dumped 2 feet of snow last weekend, after days of 60-degree temperatures, added more snow and ice to the mix.

At least eight people have died from the flood or its effects.

David Lundberg of Minnesota’s Division of Emergency Management said it’s too early to give damage costs. But he said early estimates of $100 million would equal the flood of 1993, the state’s most financially damaging ever.

In Minneapolis, the National Weather Service canceled a flood warning for the Mississippi River on Friday, after the river crested overnight at 17.1 feet--16 feet is flood stage--and began falling.

Flood warnings remained in effect along the Mississippi from St. Paul to Red Wing and along parts of the Minnesota and St. Croix rivers. On Friday afternoon, the Mississippi River was at 21.6 feet in St. Paul, where flood stage is 14 feet.

The continuing flooding wasn’t the only bad weather news.

In western Texas, tornadoes and baseball-size hail smashed homes and toppled power lines late Thursday. One person was killed.