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THROWBACK THURSDAY: When Ice Jammed the Rock

This is a story from the WQAD News 8 archives from March of 2001 with reporter Eric Roby. The ice floe in Barstow completely broke free around 11 last night.   ...

This is a story from the WQAD News 8 archives from March of 2001 with reporter Eric Roby.

The ice floe in Barstow completely broke free around 11 last night.    By 11:30 the first chunks of ice could be seen in Moline.    Then a few minutes later the river was completely covered with churning ice.

"It's been a long week," says one man who monitored the quickly rising river.

"We've been out here since Monday afternoon watching this thing."

The ice is moving fast carrying with it were whole trees.  You can see most of this tree but this one looks more like a shark going through the ice.

We also spotted this refrigerator as it was floating down the stream.    And this water tank was ripped free from somewhere upstream.

"It's now midnight and all that is left is that huge ice jam," said reporter Eric Roby along the riverfront.

"Now it's been chewed up by several different bridges," he reported.  "What's happening is as it goes through these bridges it's hitting these pylons over there breaking it up.  That's the best news of all because that means it's less likely it's going to get caught up on anything else downstream."

Later the biggest ice chunks rammed into the bridge and didn't break.  Look closely: the smaller pieces of ice were flipping in the air.

The ice started backing up.   You can see the flow of the water was slow.   Once again emergency crews became nervous.
Another big chunk of ice came down river and could cause more flooding.

But luck was on our side.   Within another ten minutes the biggest part of the ice floe had passed, the river had started to clear.

"Very good," said a woman who was watching the river through the night.

"Just glad that it's going straight on down.  It'll save a lot of work for a lot of people who have been down here working hard to watch this river."

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