When it comes to disaster response missions, Chris Botz has seen a few during his 28-year career with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, St. Paul District.

As a park ranger at Baldhill Dam, located a few miles northeast of Valley City, North Dakota, Botz spends most of his time working shoreline management issues, ensuring campers have everything they need, and adjusting the gates at the dam to regulate Lake Ashtabula water levels.

Botz said he loves his day-to-day job, but also enjoys helping people during a disaster response mission. He added that when the call comes for him to switch gears and change his park ranger campaign hat out for his red emergency operations hat, it becomes a job of long hours, but one that he embraces, and he will do whatever is necessary to get the job done.

That willingness to serve is exactly what propelled Botz into action in April as a series of spring storms created severe flooding conditions within North Dakota. Botz said he was there supporting Corps of Engineers flood operations within the Sheyenne River basin from Valley City all the way down to Kindred, North Dakota, which is about 30 miles from Fargo, North Dakota. The work, he said, was rewarding but required a lot of coordination with local officials, public works directors and local mayors.

While the job can be stressful, Botz said it’s important to him because Valley City and the surrounding area are more than the place where he works, it’s where he calls home, it’s where he is raising his two children and where met his wife. “Valley City is a great place to work and raise a family,” said Botz. “It is small enough that you know most of your neighbors, and it comes together in times of need. I am fortunate that I was able to spend most of my career working in a job that I enjoy in a great area to raise a family.”

For Botz, a Backus, Minnesota, native, supporting the flood fight is about taking care of the community. With too many disaster response missions under his belt to remember, he said that while his house was safe during this year’s flood fight, it was in danger of being flooded during the 2009 and 2011 floods within Valley City. Having went through those events, he said he could certainly empathize with the stress people in low-lying areas were facing as rising waters threatened their homes this year.

While the water continued to rise, Botz said he and a small team from the Corps of Engineers fought back against Mother Nature and the Sheyenne River. He said the Corps supported the city of Valley City’s flood fight efforts by constructing temporary levees and provided technical assistance to help the community and the valley better understand what was needed to reduce the flood risk.

“When you see temporary levees go up in town it brings an uneasy feeling,” said Botz. “You know that Mother Nature has sent us a challenge to work with, but it is a reassuring feeling knowing that the town is prepared. We have an excellent public works department and fire department that has gone through this in the past. Once the levees go up, it falls on them to manage all of the water pumping to help keep the community dry.”

The temporary levees, built by the Corps’ contractor, Strata Corporation from Grand Forks, North Dakota, included eight sections with a combined distance of more than 8,000 feet in length. They were constructed from clay soils ‘borrowed’ from a field near Valley City. Since the levees were not engineered to withstand a flood, Botz said the levees required routine monitoring to ensure they were able to hold back the river. He said the city was able to find more than 100 volunteers to monitor the temporary levees as the Sheyenne River slowly rose to the fifth highest flood elevation in recorded history. Volunteers monitored the levees 24-hours a day at the height of the flood and notified Corps of Engineers officials as soon as a vulnerable area was identified. Botz said no serious issues were ever discovered, but the team remained vigilant.

Working 12+ hour days, seven days a week, might be stressful for some, but Botz said it’s a small sacrifice if it means the community can continue to go about their daily activities with minimal impact. That sense of selfless service is evident while Botz is driving more than an hour away from his home to check on the small community of Fort Ransom, North Dakota – population of 105 people. While he was coordinating for the delivery of 6,000 sandbags with support from mayors in Valley City and Fargo, Botz said his son was getting ready for his prom in Valley City.

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