Dykon expects chilly reception…

Explosives crew standing by to blast river ice.

If a 1-mile-long ice jam on the Platte River doesn’t start moving downstream, officials plan to use explosives to blast it loose early Thursday, said John Winkler, general manager of the Papio-Missouri River Natural Resources District.

“This ice jam has been stubborn. It hasn’t moved one iota,” Winkler said Wednesday morning. The district has contacted Dykon Explosive Demolition Corp. of Tulsa, Oklahoma, which would use a helicopter to drop explosives onto the ice jam.

Winkler says his team will decide by Thursday morning whether or not to blast the one and a half mile long ice jam, situated just south of Two Rivers State Park, just south of West Center Road.

“Typically when you’ve got this much open water ahead of it and behind it [the force] just pushes through,” he explained. “But for some reason this is not happening this year.”