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Update from Lt Col Troy Krabbenhoft
North Dakota Wing Public Affairs Officer

Images - Lt Col Michael Provencher briefing ground Teams 1 and 2 for their missions this morning.

The command post went to 24 hour operations.

Col Walt Vollmers and Lt Col Mike Provencher were the Incident Commander (IC) and Deputy IC pulling the night shift with very minimal sleep. They did an awesome job getting the personnel lodging, cots from the Red Cross and getting the teams bed down for the night all around the clock.

Our last team hit the rack for the night at 0530 this morning. So some teams are sleeping and others are on the mission already. Very busy around here.

Col Bruce Emmel is the safety officer and said the media may be coming and his wife is going to bring some food for the troops. We are expecting over 100 people soon.

If South Dakota could have made it here, we would have peaked that number...

Teams went to the Fargo Dome and loaded sand bags. One team, Starfish 710 led by 1st Lt Luke Fredrick no more then hit the ground, and they went straight over to the Fargo Dome and put four hours of hard labor work after a long 5 hour drive here.

Ground Team 5 slept for 6 hours and went right back to work to the KFGO Towers. 2nd Lt Ramler from St Cloud and Capt Warneke led the teams right back to work.

The 0800hrs briefing was done by Lt Col Ludlow. Maj Jay Manley is the Air Branch Director.

We have a small window of opportunity to get a plane in the air and get some aerial photos for the city of Fargo and surrounding areas. To add to the Aerial problems is that there is migrating birds that like the water, so anywhere could be a problem.

The guys at the Fargo Dome worked right next to the North Dakota State Bison Football team. Wahpeton ND will be cresting today. and Fargo on Thursday.

We are trying to find out how to get to some areas because several roads are under water and there are washed out roads that are un-drivable.

South Dakota is trying to send some people to us, and that is the exact problem, they can't get here due to interstate I-29 is underwater and un-drivable.

There will be more to follow along with pictures...

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