NECHE (AP) - Residents in this northeastern North Dakota town on Saturday were keeping a close eye on sandbag levees, after an early morning rural road washout unleashed a torrent of water on the community.

"We were scrambling for quite a while, starting about 1:00 this morning," Mayor Lee Beattie said Saturday afternoon.

"Our diking system here has stabilized … so we feel good about that," he said. "We need to just keep watching things."

Residents of the Pembina County community of about 440 were prepared to go back to sandbagging at a moment's notice, he said.

Beattie said a farm road about four miles west of town that was holding back overland floodwaters washed out early Saturday, causing the emergency situation that the mayor said the town had never experienced before.

"Once it gave way, it shot (water) all our way," he said. "We got a pile of people out here and started sandbagging operations again. We ran completely out of sandbags."