In the 1997 Red River flood in the United States, dikes over the Grand Forks and East Grand Forks area weren't working flooding thousand of homes and reached over two miles away from the North American river, the Red River.
There was some sense of imminent threat in Grand Forks, but the cities could not prepare for such an enormous flood. The National Weather Service (NWS) had a long-standing forecast for the river to crest at 49 feet (14.9 m), which was the river's highest level during the 1979 flood. The cities had been able to get their dikes to this level, but the river continued to rise past it, to the astonishment of the NWS (which did not upgrade its forecast until April 16, the day the river actually reached 49 feet). The dikes in the low-lying Lincoln Drive neighborhood of Grand Forks were the first to break, doing so early on April 18. Other dikes over the Grand Forks and East Grand Forks area would fail that day and the next, flooding thousands of homes. Water would end up reaching areas over two miles (3 km) away from the Red River, necessitating the evacuation of all of East Grand Forks and 75% of Grand Forks. The Red River (French: riviere Rouge or riviere Rouge du Nord, American English: Red River of the North) is a North American river. 
