A Minnesota family living on the edge of a failing dam fear the worst as they recall the startling moment they had to flee their decades old home.
The Rapidan Dam on the on the Blue Earth River is in ‘imminent failure condition’ after heavy flooding following abnormally high levels of rainfall.
Aerial footage shows the Rapidan Dam Store teetering on the edge of the river as flood waters rush through the eroded earth.
The owners of store, known for its homemade pies, have been afraid of this moment.
‘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. And everybody pray that it doesn’t take The Dam Store,’ owner Jenny Barnes told KARE.
‘That’s our life, as well. That’s our business; that’s our livelihood. It’s everything to us.’
The store has been in open since 1910 and owned by Barnes family since 1972. Her father still lives at the family business.
‘It’ll happen. We don’t know when but it’s going to be inevitable that the house is going to go,’ Barnes told Fox 9.
Barnes recalled the moment she heard loud bangs and saw flashes of light at 2 a.m. Monday and knew it was time for her family to evacuate.
‘We had to evacuate this morning, get as much as we could out. We’ve evacuated the store,’ she told WCCO.
The explosion Barnes witness was the Xcel Energy substation located at the dam that was actually washed away.
Debris started accumulating there on Sunday following abnormally high levels of rainfall. It left the century old dam ‘in imminent failure condition,’ officials said.
By 10:36 a.m. Monday, the river had eroded earth around the west side of the dam near the south side of Mankato to the point where water was sent cascading over the concrete, with accumulating flooding now putting the city of 45,140 at risk.
In an alert issued Monday as footage showed parts of the dam in ruins, Blue Earth County Emergency Management stated, ‘We do not know if it will totally fail or if it will remain in place.
‘However,’ the agency added, ‘we determined it was necessary to issue this notification to advise downstream residents and the correct regulatory agencies and other local agencies.’
In the meantime, debris knocked loose by the torrent of water continues to rush downstream, as power outages have also been reported in surrounding areas.
Pieces of county infrastructure are among of the debris currently being sent downriver, officials said
In their own statement, the National Weather Service described how the failure is set to cause the portion of river that cuts through Mankato to crest just below major flood state Tuesday morning.
Twenty other cities – such as Fairmont – also sit in the flash flood radius, as water has already washed out a large portion of the dam, which for years has spurred questions about its structural integrity.
Gov. Tim Walz and state emergency response officials cited such scrutiny upon issuing their own statement Monday morning, as nearby roads are in danger of being overflowed.
‘I know the structural integrity of the dam has been a question for a long time,’ Gov. Walz said of the longstanding structure, constructed in 1910 by the Ambersen Hydraulic Construction Company.
The Rapidan Dam was constructed between 1908 and 1910. It measures in at 87 feet high and 475 feet long, and is made entirely of concrete.
Officials are currently implementing the opening stages outlined in the Rapidan Dam Emergency Action Plan, a guidance outlining how to respond to such a failure and help potentially affected people kept on the backburner.