Mother Nature gets in the way of moving bought out homes

This is a little painful to watch for Mark Olgard and his kids.

Mark Olgard/former homeowner: “They immediately noticed ‘Daddy, they cut down our climbing trees!’

Especially while Mark's recovering from back surgery, the most recent reminder of all the sandbagging he did last spring to try and save this place, his former home.

“We put a lot of work into this house while we were here.”

But the progress here on River Oaks Point, must press on. Moorhead hoped some of these homes would be relocated by now, but environmental assessments and the snow and cold slowed down moving crews.

Josh Wendland/Milbank House Movers: “The weather is a big factor. It's cold now, and soon it'll probably be too warm where it will get sloppy around here.”

They're pushing snow and trimming trees in order to clear a path for these houses. Some of them, he says, about 56 feet wide. Josh says they probably won't get to all 25 homes in time.

Josh Wendland/Milbank House Movers: “Sometimes we can load one up in a day sometimes it takes two or three days. It depends on how much the excavation of frozen ground and all that we have to do.”

Michael Redlinger/Moorhead City Manager: “If it's 19 that get moved, or 18, that's still 18 or 19 house moved that otherwise would be needing protection.”

For Moorhead, the more homes go the better. If you can build a clay dike further from the river, the ground is higher, so the dike doesn’t' have to be as big. So the push is on, to get these homes pushed out before the project's washed out. The moving crew says the first homes should move out sometime next week.

Tags: reporter stories, kelsey soby, moorhead, home, flood, news, olgard, construction