City prepared with flooding checklist

IRONWOOD - Ironwood City Manager Scott Erickson said the city has developed a checklist to be used in the event of flooding.

With temperatures in the 50s forecast for the next week, city commissioners had questions Monday about the potential for flooding.

They're hoping for a gradual snowmelt to avoid the flooding damage that has occurred in some recent years.

Erickson said the city has enough sandbags to be used in the event of high water along the Montreal River and more are available from the prison in Marenisco.

The mighty Montreal was mostly ice-covered on Tuesday and there was a lot of deep snow and ice in the swamps along the river. The temperature had reached 57 under sunny skies in downtown Ironwood around 1 p.m. Tuesday.

Director of public works Bob Richards said the frost has driven deep and his department has received numerous recent calls about frozen water lines. He said two employees have been assigned to clear catch basins of snow and slush.

The Ironwood Public Safety Department's latest frost-related complaint was on Monday. The report said water pipes burst in the basement at 213 Frenchtown Road and the public works department was notified.

In Hurley, street superintendent Mark Bluse said Tuesday his workers have been tackling two water breaks, one private and one on Copper Street. He said it has been a relatively mild winter for frozen water lines, with only four so far.

Regarding streets, Bluse said, "We're hoping by the end of the week that everything should be bare."

The Ironwood-Hurley forecast calls for high temperatures around 50 degrees or more through next Tuesday, followed by a three-day cool-down with highs around 30.

The high for the 24-hour period to 7 a.m. Tuesday in Ironwood was 51 and the low was 22.

There was still 18 inches of snow on the ground Tuesday at the Gogebic-Iron Wastewater Treatment Plant, the official National Weather Service station for the city.