MANKATO, Minnesota — A portion of the home closest to the Rapidan Dam tumbled into the serving Blue Earth River Tuesday evening.
Blue Earth County officials said in a very brief news release that the home had been "undercut enough" by water racing around the failing dam and washing away the riverbank before it fell into the river.
Team members from county public works, emergency management and the Blue Earth County Sheriff’s Office are monitoring for downstream impacts. County officials said they will provide more details on Wednesday morning.
“It’s been a very scary and hard situation,” said homeowner Jenny Barnes, whose family has run the nearby Dam Store for decades. She also was worried about the store.
“That’s our life, as well. That’s our business; that’s our livelihood. It’s everything to us,” Barnes said. “There’s no stopping it. It’s going to go where it wants to go. It’s going to take what it wants to take.”
Earlier Tuesday, officials said the volume of floodwaters moving over the compromised dam near Mankato appears to be dropping but concerns remain more damage could occur.
County Engineer and Public Works Director Ryan Thilges met with reporters near the dam on the Blue Earth River to give a status update on the incident, which involved a partial failure of the west abutment. This was due to heavy water flow from recent heavy rains and a buildup of logs and debris on the dam gates.
The powerful rush of water outside the dam created "erosion and slope-cutting" that swallowed up an Xcel Energy substation and a park storage building and sucked them into the rushing river. The riverside park and a private residence nearby remain threatened. Thilges explained that the 'decay' of the riverbank had slowed into Tuesday morning, saying it was "considerably less" than the damage that took place the day before.
Thilges said there is a bit of good news in that water flows over the dam have dropped slightly from 34,800 cubic feet per second Monday to 33,000 cfs Tuesday morning, signaling that the situation may be improving. The flows measured Monday make this incident the second-worst in Rapidan Dam history, behind the flood of 1965 that disabled the dam for 10 years. Maximum flow during that incident was measured at 43,100 csf, a happening Thilges referred to as a "500-year event."
At this point, the Blue Earth County Road 9 bridge that crosses the river remains closed to keep observers from putting themselves in danger. Thilges said the county also wants to inspect the bridge after water levels drop to make sure the structure and the abutments it sits on have not been compromised.
While inspectors from the Army Corps of Engineers are on site helping assess the current condition of the Rapidan Dam, Blue Earth County Public Works staffers are evaluating whether they can implement emergency measures to stop or minimize damage without putting workers in harm's way.
Thilges told reporters the county had contacted a company with a piece of special equipment to see if they could help remove logs and debris from the upstream side of the dam to alleviate pressure, but was told that equipment was at a site more than five hours out of town. Company officials also expressed concern for the safety of their employees who would be operating that equipment.
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