Flooded drain systems cause vehicles to stall in F-M area
Flooding made for difficult travel conditions in the F-M area this morning.
FARGO-MOORHEAD (KVRR) – Flooded roads cause some drivers to stall their vehicles Monday morning as they ignored the turn around don’t drown motto.
“Unfortunately a lot of times when we get a really heavy rain event like this, the system just isn’t built to handle that much amount of rain in such a short amount of time. A lot of roads were flooded. We had some drains that were plugged. We had the crews out and unplugged those and it came down to the system not keeping up. All our lift stations were pumping at full capacity just trying to keep up,” Fargo Public Works Services Manager Paul Fiechtner said.
Crews asked for patience and say it typically takes about 30 minutes to an hour to clear roads when there are drain issues.
“A lot of it is just gathering the information and figuring out what we need to do to respond. There’s usually a lot of different things going on throughout the whole city and that’s where people call in if they give us tips on what they’re seeing out there. That helps us quite a bit so we can respond to it accordingly,” Fiechtner said.
Some roads were hit harder than others in Fargo and West Fargo.
“We did receive a lot of complaints from the 32nd Avenue area. In the southern portion of town it’s probably a large area that got backed up from the rain,” City of West Fargo Crew Chief Shawn Hanson said.
“The worst area was probably 13th Avenue and Sixth Street East. We had contractors out there earlier this year doing a lift station when they had contractor bags. We called them on top of the drain. We had to locate all of them to get the drains opened up,” Fiechtner said.
They also say to monitor your sanitary systems.
“What we’re finding is that there is a good amount of people that have their sump pumps charging into the sanitary sewer in their home,” Fiechtner said.
That is fine when it’s permitted in the winter but during summer months it could cause your home to flood.
