City of Crookston Emergency Manager Tim Froeber held a preliminary meeting with City of Crookston department heads, a WSN engineer, and representatives from the Polk County Sheriff’s Office and Polk County Emergency Management on Monday afternoon regarding the preparations for possible flood waters in Crookston. “We held a preliminary meeting with the department heads, and also had staff there from the Polk County Sheriff’s Office and Polk County Emergency Management,” said Froeber. “We also had a representative from WSN who is really good with the watershed district and was able to give us lots of information on the high-water event. The National Weather Service’s latest data has a 75 percent chance of getting up to 24.3 feet and a 50 percent chance of reaching 26.9 feet.”
While the water is currently expected to threaten the levy, Froeber did say the City of Crookston will be utilizing the emergency operations center and ward command posts activated as the water begins to rise in the next few weeks. “With those numbers, we will definitely be having our emergency operations center and ward command posts operating,” said Froeber. “We will let everyone know when that is coming up, get that into the media and the people from the wards will probably be hearing about helping out with walking the dikes and at their command post. We have a level of protection at the 31-foot mark but we still have a few areas of concern in town that Public Works will be working on. Right now we are just hoping for a really good spring thaw and not a whole bunch of moisture.”
