The drizzly afternoon stillness in the nascent Red River Settlement 200 years ago was detonated by explosions of ice slabs heaving and splitting and colliding. A powerful onrush of water then sent settlers scrambling from wooden homes to higher ground. "Far as the eye could discover, the earth was covered with water carrying on its surface the wreck of a whole colony," pioneer John Pritchard wrote on Aug. 2, 1826, just a few months after the flood began. "It presented a scene of devastation dreadful to contemplate and very difficult to describe." The flood was the largest in the recorded history of the entire Red River watershed , which spans eastern North Dakota, northwestern Minnesota and southern Manitoba, Parks Canada historian Scott Stephen said in an interview. "One of the defining aspects was the force and the fury. It's just terrifying to read. It's like a horror story." Flood coverage in southern Manitoba floods of 1826, 1852, 1950, 1979, 1997, 2009 and 2011.…