FARGO, North Dakota (AFP) - - Scores more homes on the North Dakota plains were evacuated Friday, as residents fled the state's worst floods in recorded history -- now beginning to breach levees and miles of sandbag dikes.

Volunteers were battling freezing temperatures in a desperate bid to shore up the flood barriers around Fargo, North Dakota, as the US Army Corp of Engineers said a levee holding back flood waters had leaked.

In the early hours of Friday, authorities began evacuating around 150 homes from an area southeast of the city's water plant, the second mandatory evacuation zone established in a matter of hours.

"Right now we are going to focus on trying to save everything we have protected now," Fargo Mayor Dennis Walaker said Friday morning. "The only thing they haven't thrown at us so far is a tornado."

Several hundred people have left their homes so far.

In the nearby city of Moorhead -- which lies across the Red River in the state of Minnesota -- National Guard troops and construction firms pitched in to ferry trucks full of sandbags to shore-up defenses against the floodwaters.

But efforts were hampered by cold weather.

Shari Lee, a 40-year-old hospital worker from Moorhead said fresh snowfall on Friday meant helpers had to wrestle with sand bags, now stiff with ice and snow.

"The weather slowed things down in the beginning, it is hard to build dikes in on the ice and snow," she said.

Lee moved to the area in 1998, because it was unaffected by floods which hit the region a year earlier. She now faces the prospect of surrendering her home of 10 years to the flood waters.

"We thought the 97 flood was the flood of the century, so we thought we were safe," Lee said, gesturing to the pale green house behind her.

"We're not going under, but a lot of our neighbors are. That is just as hard," she said.

Authorities said the Red River -- swollen with seasonal snow melt, was approaching record levels, and showed no signs of abating.

"None of us, no matter how old we are, have ever seen this," Walaker said. "We are in uncharted territory."

Residents trapped in the area were rescued by boat and helicopter because crews feared bracing the increasingly menacing river, which runs along the North Dakota-Minnesota border and flows northward to Canada.

Fargo was most at risk because it has not developed the extensive flood protection systems of upriver cities such as Grand Forks and Winnipeg, Canada.

In 1997, massive flooding from the river sent waters here to 39.57 feet (12 meters) high and forced tens of thousands of people from their homes -- an event likely to be eclipsed by this weekend.

Nearby Casselton, North Dakota is preparing to open its doors for up to 1,500 evacuees. Several area high schools planned to do the same.

The river was already 20 feet (six meters) above flood levels in Fargo and was forecast to rise several more before cresting on Saturday.

In 1897, the Red River reached a record 40.1 feet (12.2 meters) in Fargo.

President Barack Obama has issued a federal disaster declaration for 34 counties and two Native American reservations as nearly the entire state remained under a major flood warning.

More snow was forecast to fall on the Red River valley in the coming days and rain could worsen flood conditions next week.

But for 52-year-old Dennis Sullivan, a lifelong resident of the Fargo-Moorhead area, giving up was not an option.

In 1969 he threw sandbags as a grade-schooler. He later stuck through the 1997 flood when water conditions worsened.

"We're holding our own," Sullivan called over flooded Elm Street in Moorhead. "We've fought a lot of floods, and they've never won. This one isn't going to either.

"We're here to stay," he said.

Is this article useful to you?