Bettye Morton had a rude awakening Friday morning.

Her son, Mike, noticed some seepage inside his workshop and -- with the Red River expected to rise another foot or more -- thought of his mom.

Bettye said her son opened her bedroom door and said, "Mom, we gotta go. We gotta go now."

The 78-year-old was carried from the Oakport Township home north of Moorhead where she's lived for 52 years by her son. Mike had allowed her to carry one suitcase for the ride out in his small fishing boat.

"You should have seen what he made me leave behind," she said. She brought just clothes, and her dog, Morgan, a 9-year-old Shih Tzu.

In all Bettye's years in the house, the worst water she'd seen was just seepage, even in 1997. She would have been eligible for a buyout after recent floods, but didn't want to move from the scenic riverfront property. She planned to stay with a niece in Moorhead.

Across Moorhead and Fargo, others had surrendered to water or the likelihood it would invade their homes. Both cities urged people in neighborhoods close to the river to leave, and evacuations continued into Friday. MeritCare hospital evacuated 183 patients to other hospitals, including 45 to Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis. Concordia College in Moorhead sent its students home without a date for resuming classes. In river neighborhoods, many homes Friday had signs in the windows indicating the residents had left.

In Moorhead's Horn Park neighborhood, residents of three homes at the north end of Rivershore Drive had left by Friday, when water was cascading over the sandbag dikes they'd built. Up the block, a small group of people was building up a dike to protect the rest of the riverfront homes. Those residents had already moved belongings from their basements to upper floors.

Not all were ready to surrender and walk away. George Korsmo was one of those.

Korsmo and his neighbors have seen their block along Rivershore Drive transformed from a placid refuge for people and wildlife into a chaotic zone featuring an 8-foot tall clay dike, human sandbagging chains, beeping and roaring heavy equipment, mud, snow, ice and at least three homes considered lost to the flood.

"[Last] Saturday it was almost fun and games," Korsmo said. "Sunday we got the pumps out. That was making it real. Monday's when the panic started setting in."

Friday, a day after the crest prediction was raised yet another foot, a wave of neighbors and relatives was madly widening a sandbag dike to raise it yet again to the height of pink ribbons recently tied to stakes.

Korsmo also rearranged the inside of his house. A painting of polar bears his grandfather had made was the first thing he moved. He'd also put the family piano on concrete blocks. His first floor, he noted, is at the 41-foot, 2-inch mark, 10 inches below the point where the river is supposed to peak.

"It's all a matter of elevation," he said, adding that this week has deepened the Christian faith and belief in people that he and his wife, Ruth, have. "Eventually you have to give in to the power of nature. But we don't want to be here for another one like this."

The historic crest, expected Sunday, will indeed be a high point, Korsmo said. "There's always something about when they tell you it's crested, and holding."

Korsmo and his neighbors intend to be in their homes for that announcement, pumping seepage from behind the dikes back into the river and hoping the sandbag walls behind them will withstand the pressure of an unprecedented volume of water, perhaps for weeks.

Friday the walled-off river was flowing at a height almost up to their kitchen windowsills but not into their homes.

mcaul@startribune.com • 612-673-7646 richm@startribune.com • 612-673-4425