MPR’s Lorna Benson interviews Winona resident Calvin Fremling, who shares memories of 1965 flood that threatened the town.
Winona is well protected by a ten-point-five mile, 25-foot high permanent flood control dike. That wasn't the case in 1965, when the town was working furiously to build a temporary dike that would protect against the rapidly rising water. Fremling remembers patrolling a mile long section of the that dike. He worked in four hour shifts, looking for leaks.
From April 12-19, 1965, the Mississippi River rose seven feet in seven days, going from flood stage (13 feet) to a record 20.77 feet…higher than much of the city of Winona.
Transcripts
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SPEAKER 1: The battle at that time in Winona, as the crest approached, was really furious that it was like being in a war zone, where as you walk the top of the dike, a truck, a loaded truck went by every two minutes or so. And the pace of dike building was so fast that the dike was squishy. And unforgettably, when a truck went by, the truck traveled in a little depression in the dike that moved with the truck. It was like the truck was running on a sponge rubber mattress. And this depression in the dike was six or eight inches deep, I guess, but it was very visible as the truck-- as the truck passed
SPEAKER 2: At the time, did you ever feel like the dike would fail?
SPEAKER 1: Yes. Yeah. Most of the people in that area were very concerned because it quivered. It quivered. And really, it didn't fail because the Burlington railroad tracks on the Wisconsin side of the river failed and washed out and allowed the floodwaters to go over into the lowlands of Wisconsin. And fortuitously, Winona was saved by that event.
SPEAKER 2: It sounds like at the time, a lot of people weren't sure that this would work at all and perhaps thought that it would fail. Why was so much effort put into trying to do what many people thought was impossible?
SPEAKER 1: Well, they had no choice. If they hadn't done that, we know what would have happened. The city of Winona, which then was built almost entirely in the floodplain of the Mississippi. Winona would have been two small islands. The entire city would have been, well, I can't remember how deep, but 6 or 8 feet underwater throughout most of the city. So it was a, what, a multi-million dollar gamble, I guess.
And it's interesting that even though the city now is surrounded by a permanent dike that was built during the early 80s, because it's built on san, when the river rises, Lake Winona rises. Lake Winona is inside the dike system. And also the water table under the city of Winona rises. So that's a problem.
If the flood crest lasts long enough, then basements start to be flooded because of the rising water table. And to prevent that, Winona has five huge pump systems that de-water the land on the inside of the dike on the city side of the levee. So Winona now has a very sophisticated flood control system.
SPEAKER 2: What does it look like in Winona right now with the rising mississippi?
SPEAKER 1: I was fishing the day before yesterday on the river and it was just higher. And that's all. A lot of debris going down, lots of junk going down in the river. And then you worry about wave action working on your levee, and by strong winds, or when some kind of watercraft or whatever. So there are a lot of things to worry about. If the river is out there waiting and watching and waiting, that brown god, stalin, untamed, intractable. But it's there all the time.