Red River Rising Part 4

Saturday May 24
The phone man arrives at noon.  Flood water had damaged the phone line entering the house.  He re-sets the line, four feet higher.  Wanda calls.  Her crew’s ready to get rid of some wood.  They arrive in a van pulling a trailer of tools and equipment.  They’re from Christ the Redeemer Lutheran Church in Minneapolis.  Dave, a civil engineer, Paul, a computer programer, Scott who works at a Coca Cola bottling plant and Roger, an on-line computer program designer.  These four men and Jim proceed to rip out 1000 square feet of historic maple flooring.  It takes them 3 hours.  It took about a week to install that flooring.  Again, small mercies.  I take photos.  Scott uses a rotary saw to cut down the middle of the floor then they use crow bars to lever up the maple boards, like peeling an apple.

Ripping up old growth maple wood flooring

My photography professor, Harley Straus, was never without his Leicas.  That’s how he navigated the world, through a viewfinder.  He even documented the last days of his life, as he was dying of lung cancer.  I appreciate that more now. My hands are cold, my wood’s being ripped up and I can’t find the batteries for the flash and I forget to push the film. 

Complete strangers drive five hours to spend time doing the  most horrible work I’ve ever witnessed (so far).  I will probably never see theses four men again yet this afternoon spent with them is the most religious of my life.  When they leave we drive downtown to spend time amidst real carnage.  Nothing like a little perspective.



               

                    The Minneapolis Angels with the last of our wood
 
Sunday May 25
After church Naomi and I drive over to the Columbia Mall to drop off rolls of film then drive back to her home in the Riverside Park neighborhood.  Her basement clean-up is going well except for her negatives, including a documentary project for a summer internship she did at an archeological dig in New Mexico.  All gone.  I’d always meant to ask her for a favorite print of her work there and now it’s too late.

When she drops me home I sink into a funk.  Jim takes me to see Lost World, which oddly cheers me up.  A T. Rex in San Diego, how refreshing.  This is the first thing we’ve done so far that the kids at home are sorry they’ve missed.  Centreville neighbor Melissa took Anna grocery shopping.  Friend Bob took them to Burger King then the toy store.  He buys each of them something and they’re delighted.

Monday May 26
We’ve stepped into a first name only culture, which is humbling.  This work isn’t about recognition.  Wanda calls to see if we want four Baptists to come over to power wash and sanitize the basement.  The appropriateness of their work makes me laugh.  Wanda’s incredible.  She knows the lay of the land, rather water.  Her home was flooded earlier in the year.  She met her husband years ago while doing disaster relief and they’ve been a team ever since.

Marty McCarthy is a Gulf War vet from Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Bob Bottoms, the boss, is from Kentucky; Dallas James and Paul Merwin, a Baptist preacher, are from Tennessee.  It’s sunny and warm.  The lads arrive and start unloading their huge gas-powered washer and gallons of bleach.  This is going to be pretty intense.  We all take turns in the noxious basement, them power spraying, us using yard brushes to ‘sweep’ the water into our basement bleach.  The the same routine with the 50% bleach solution, followed by the squeegee sweep.

During our breaks, we drink soda on the front porch.  Bob’s hat has medals from almost every disaster in the past decade, he’s been there, cleaning up.  The Southern Baptists are disaster missionaries.  Marty and Dallas are veterans taking off a week from work to come up here to help.  We’re talking vigorous holidays here.  Paul’s a preacher, he’s the most talkative, telling us about his wife and his dog, named Dimples.  He makes us laugh.  He’s the youngest of 16 children.

After the cleaning I get out my camera and we gather around their Disaster Aide van to take pictures, as if it were Easter Sunday.  Well, I guess it sorta is.  Maybe specially in disasters-we need these rituals.  As they’re driving away I realize it’s Memorial Day.
                    

                                     The Power Wash Gang

Jim and I go downstairs.  We re position the industrial fans, pointing them toward the windows so all the moisture is blown out.  The dehumidifier's humming.  Our basement’s isn’t unique anymore.  But it’s no longer dying.
                      

Bare basement bathroom fittings

Tuesday May 27
Brother Mark arrives at 11:30 a.m.  His truck is a mobile DeWalt showroom, plus saw horses, tool boxes filled with exotic tools.  He surveys the damage making a list of needed supplies.  As he carries in his tools five single engine bi-planes do acrobatic formations in the intensely blue North Dakota sky.  We go to the hardware/lumber store.                  

Mark measuring for drywall

It takes Mark three 15 hour days to bring things back to normal.  There was, needless to say, a lot of water damage.  We take Mark to get a tetanus shot then to borrow a moisture meter from the city and test all the studs, learning quickly that wood is wettest at the bottom, gravity pulling the water down. 

Moisture meter to determine water content of wood

Any boards more than 11% water have to be replaced otherwise mold could set in.  We’d used some old salvaged wood to put in the bathroom walls all those years ago and they hold the water the worst.  Those walls need to be completely rebuilt.  Mark also puts in the drywall studs.  It’s Molly’s Critter Play at school this evening.  This is the first time we’ve ever missed a school event.

Friday May 30
We have the drywall delivered then take Mark out to dinner at a Sport’s Restaurant.  It used to be the Main Street Restaurant.  I have the best hamburger I’ve eaten since a friend’s Texas Cattlemen’s BBQ when we lived in Galveston.  Jim and Mark watch sports tv, I watch the people.

Saturday, June 1
Today Jim and I learn how to drywall.  I get the battery DeWalt drill, a leather belt pouch full of screws and proceed to goof up for several rows then get the hang of it.  Jim and Mark hoist and drill the drywall onto the studs, I fill in the support grid.  By the end of the day I ache all over but it beats sanitizing. We go back to the Sport’s restaurant for dinner.

We get home and resume drywalling.  It’s a nice spring night.  Naomi drops by.  She comes downstairs and sits on the saw horse, drinking a soda, as we hammer and drill.  She talks of anthropology, history, the flood.  The room’s lit with two lamps I remembered to bring, creating a warm incandescent glow.

Monday June 2
It’s pouring rain.  I drive out to the Buffalo Farm and buy Mark a bison skull.  His entryway of his historic St. Louis house is decorated in a Southwestern style.  Mark’s generosity is awesome, like Anna’s, who taken care of Claire and Molly for a solid month.  How does one ever repay such gifts?

Tuesday June 3
Mark leaves early, before dawn.  He works for the Missouri Highway Department and this is there busiest season.  If it weren’t a disaster he couldn’t have joined us.  At 8:30 a.m. the Army Corps of Engineers finally hit our street to remove the trash.  It takes 45 minutes for umpteen dump trucks and two pay loaders.  We spend the next two days painting the outside of the house.  I go to Target and buy a bunch of red peppers to hang on our redwood gate.  The lilacs are in full bloom.  It’s Claire’s band concert tonight.  She’s struggling with the viola and I want to give her a hug.
                       

Army Corps of Engineers supervising flood clean up trash collection on Fallcreek Court

Thursday June 6
We leave Grand Forks at 2 p.m.  We’ve listed the house with a realtor.  It feels sad to say goodbye to this place.  It’s half the size of our Centreville house, but it’s well designed and it suits us.  We’re comfortable here, even without the wood.

We drive through McDonald’s for coffee then head south.  The sky’s so blue, with billowy clouds.  When I first moved away from North Dakota I dreamed of this sky, this blue.  I ponder W.B. Yeats' poem, Easter 1916 describes Ireland's push for independence of English rule as a 'terrible beauty,.'  A terrible beauty is an apt description of North Dakota too.  Some places are just more dedicated to molding ‘flesh and body into soul.’
             

Classic North Dakota sky

Red River Rising Part 1

Sourlie Bridge, Grand Forks, ND (Grand Forks Herald)

September 4, 2017
As I write this, clean up has begun after Hurricane Harvey dropped  50+ inches  of rain on Houston, TX (the fourth largest U.S. city, population 2.3 million).  I am reminded of one of the most significant months of  my husband Jim and my life.  We spent it cleaning up after another flooding disaster, one affecting a much smaller population.  It was April of 1997.  We left northern Virginia in the full flush of spring with a heavy heart as we headed north to the disaster 1800 miles away.  

Over the course of a month we learned much about catastrophes.   But the most important lesson was the silver lining: God provides, even when everything is lost.  We met so many Christians during our 30-day sojourn, whom with the grace of the Holy Spirit willingly and lovingly helped us do fiercely awful work.  We will never forget our time among the Saints. 

The following is a diary I kept during the clean-up of the little duplex we lived in and loved for nearly 10 years but rented out when it didn't sell when we moved East:

Centreville, VA Friday April 18, 1997 6:40 a.m EDT
“Carol, I don’t want to alarm you but I think it’s the middle of the night and the sirens are going off.  They’re evacuating people from Lincoln Park,” my college friend Naomi tells me in a frightening pre-dawn call from Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Her voice is tense, fear creeping in at the edges as she listens to the radio news.  She holds the phone to the open door--I hear the sirens repetitive wail then the radio blaring evacuation orders.  How devastating it must be for everyone there.  Surreal.  Lincoln Park is one of the lowest parts of the city, two and a half miles from our rental house. 

The 1996-1997 winter was one of the worst ever in the Dakotas.  There was a particularly wet, ground drenching autumn followed by a record snowfall of 100+ inches of uncharacteristically wet snow.  By December the weather people were naming the blizzards.  The last blizzard was named Hannah.  A quick thaw followed by a final April ice storm set the stage for record flooding.

One of the 1996-97 North Dakota blizzards

7:15 a.m.
It’s time to get daughter’s Molly, 6, and Claire, 9, up and ready for school in Virginia.  The daffodils are in full bloom and I’m struck by how disconnected I feel from the spring beauty here and the disaster unfolding to the northwest.

Needing to get a better handle on things I call the Grand Forks Herald newspaper at 9:00 a.m. (8:00 a.m. CDT) to order a daily subscription, first class.  “What’s happening there?” I ask.  “Oh, it’s bad, real bad.  They’ve just changed the the crest to 50 feet (flood stage is 28 feet).  The Lincoln Park area’s been hit real hard, and they’re workin’ on the dikes non-stop,”  the subscription clerk tells me.

Why didn’t we get flood insurance?  The National Weather Service was predicting a crest of 49 feet.  The most recent severe flood, in 1979, crested at 48.81.  The city had since built a water diversion channel for the English Coulee so our house should be o.k.  But...

I call and leave a message on our renter’s answering machine then call Mark who looks after our place there.  Yes, he reassures me, the drain plugs are in which should protect us from sewer backup.  The sump pump’s working so we should be o.k., he says.  Mark’s done this for us every spring since I can remember.  He and his wife Linda were moving things out of their basement, just in case.  she has to go to work.  Odd, I thought, making people go to work when they need to be taking care of their homes.  Everything must be o.k. if you have to go to work.

The evening news has dramatic footage of the Lincoln Park evacuation.  I’m reminded of the 1979 Flood, waking up on a Saturday morning to our duplex neighbor pounding on our door asking if we had 3 feet of water in our basement too?  We did.  Outside we could see the overland English Coulee creeping our way, about half a block away.

Several neighbors were contractors so they organized construction of a dike with no city involvement.  For awhile, we were our own little duchy while the city fought the Red River.  “Ha! Get down here to Riverside Park if ya’ want to see water,” the public works office admonished when we called City Hall.  Later the National Guard set up a patrol in front of our next door neighbor’s until the water receded.  Three homes were completely destroyed by the raging Red River in the 1979 flood but at least 700 basements were damaged in our neighborhood, causing millions in property damage.  The English Coulee is usually a dry stream bed, unmarked on many maps. 

When Claire and Molly get home from school they have a snack then Claire gets her camping gear ready for her Junior Girl Scout troop’s first real camping trip, to Camp Cole in Stafford County, Virginia.  She’s so excited.  We take Molly to an unused road by the Ellanor C. Lawrence Park to practice her bike riding.  It’s a bit cold but sunny.

Centreville, VA, Saturday a.m., April 19, 1997 6 a.m.
I devour the Washington Post’s page two story.  The photo is of the oldest part of Grand Forks, near the river, in thigh high water.  That’s not the kiss of death for our place, we’re maybe seven to 10 feet higher on Fallcreek Court.  ‘...enforced evacuations for much of the eastern part of the city and voluntary evacuation for the rest of the city,’ the paper says.  Our renters left Friday evening, leaving the key with Duane, who owns the other side of our duplex.  The crest was bumped up to 53 feet, on  Saturday.  I call Linda again.  No flooding and the power’s still on.  She had the oddest thing I’d ever heard in a North Dakota voice: Defeat, a dread the worst could happen.

“How could they not have known how bad it would be?” she said.  “There’s been so much wet snow, it will be higher than 53 feet,”  She was still moving things out of her basement.  She said she loved us then I lost contact with her. 

Finally around 10 a.m. I get a hold of Duane.  His wife and son have evacuated but he was manning both our sump pumps.  Not much going on, most folks’ left.  He planned on staying.  The weather’s sunny. “What if the water gets to Fallcreek Court, I speculate?,” “Then all the houses will be flooded,” he deduces.  We laugh, not nervously, but wildly, raucously, at such  absurdity.

I imagine Duane in his kitchen, the mirror image of our half of the duplex, smoking a Marlboro, in an old flannel shirt and work pants, untied work boots at the door, wrenches and power tools scattered on the counter, looking out the window,  for any sign.

Downtown Grand Forks, ND April 19, 1997 (St. Paul Pioneer Press)

3 p.m.
I call Duane again.  “Yeah, I’m still here.  It’s looking bad.  There’s a fire downtown, they’re trying to put it out.  (Grand Forks Air Base) helicopters going over like crazy, non-stop, evacuating people near the river, I guess.”  I hear the helicopters beat the air as he talks.  “City’s asking everyone to leave.  Nope, no water yet, sump pumps' workin’ fine.  I’m stayin.”

“You take care, Duane. God bless.”

Over the next 24 hours a near total evacuation takes place of 60,000 people in two Midwestern cities flanking the Red River of the North on the Great Northern Plains. The record breaking crest was 54 feet, 26 feet above flood stage.

Flashback 20 years earlier: Grand Forks, ND November 1975
Jim meets our oldest daughter Anna and me at the smallest airport I'd ever flown into, in Grand Forks.  Two 'gates' and you could park at the door if a space was available.  Jim had arrived two weeks earlier to start work at the Microbiology Department, University of North Dakota Medical School. 

Anna has on a red English snowsuit and knit hat and mittens, lovingly made by Jim's mum.  I’m wearing a Scottish sheepskin coat, bought specially for our North Dakota adventure.  We’re emigrating back to the United States, from Jim’s native country, Great Britain.  We have three suitcases.  Two trunks, a crated Swedish pine dining table and two wooden bookcases that arrived by air freight two days before.  We’re ready for a wilder place.  Materially it is the lightest period of our lives, psychologically the most free.

A weatherman friend we meet that first year in Grand Forks told us about a new hire who showed up in January for a job then turned around and got the next plane back to L.A.  For us though, North Dakota was a good fit.  We didn’t have a car for our first winter so we went downtown often, to family owned department stores and a little bakery where we would get muffins and hot drinks.  Children gave Murphy the bus driver homemade cookies at Christmas.  We walked the eight blocks from our flat to the University, Jim to work, me to school.

There were days of unspeakable cold and wind but others so crystal clear the sky seemed bluer than any other place on earth.  The snow was dry, difficult to make snowballs with but good for cross country skiing.  And come summer we rented a garden plot from the University, near the Coulee, and discovered the richest soil in North America, along with the largest mosquitoes.

We bought a car in April 1976.  That first weekend we drove to Turtle River State Park, 15 miles west of town.  The snow was thawing.  We’d packed a picnic with a thermos of hot tea.  Anna found raccoon tracks in the sand near the river and we were in awe of the emptiness of the place, the antithesis of the English countryside.  We saw no one on our back trail hikes, it was like being at the edge of the world.  I look at photos we took that day--there’s melting snow still covering everything but we look so happy.

Centreville, VA Sunday April 20, 1997
The Washington Post gives Grand Forks a good size photo on page one, above the fold, of a lake of water across the flooded city's downtown but the Cass Gilbert depot still looks dry.  However the Security Building went up in flames.  I dig out my Grand Forks university architectural photography negatives and find a photo of it.  It was a turn of the century, down-at-heel building with redeeming Romanesque arches.  My fellow photog student Naomi and I photographed its basement barbershop years ago.

9 a.m.
I try calling Duane.  No answer. Jim, Molly and
I go to church. Claire gets home at 4.  How grown
up she is that she can go sleep in the woods
without us.  On the news the Grand Forks hospital 
is being evacuated by Air Base helicopters. 
Our house is two blocks closer to the river. 
We know now.  We just don’t know how bad.

Centreville, VA Monday April 21, 1997
‘Call FEMA and fill in application for a Small
Business Loan.
                                                     

Naomi, outside Grand Forks Security Building basement barber shop 1981

Wednesday April 22, 1997 12:45 p.m. 
Naomi calls from her uncle’s in Minneapolis.  Naomi,
her daughter and mother Janette had a terrible time
getting out of Grand Forks.  They managed to walk
a quarter of a mile through incredibly cold, calve high water from her mother’s condo to their car--no one by this time was parking in the underground lot.  That design feature saved Janette a devastating cleanup of her apartment.                     

They wound their way out of the city, avoiding flooded streets, having at one point to go east, toward the river, to get to a dry westward street.  They got as far as Manvel, 15 miles west of Grand Forks.  Stayed there two days until Manvel, too, was threatened with flooding, then drove the 75 miles south to Fargo, ND, to find a bridge open to cross the Red River.  Because the Red flows north, it had crested a week earlier.  She was thankful they were safe and of Grand Forks Mayor Owen’s handling of the evacuation.  Also for the free Grand Forks Herald newspapers now being distributed all over the Red River Valley. 


Centreville, VA Thursday April 23, 1997 9 a.m.
After the girls leave for school I drive over to the U.S.Geological Survey headquarters, in Reston.  I need a topographic map.  The USGS Map Store people are very helpful. Needless to say, there had been a run on the Grand Forks County maps.  An information specialist takes me to their website and the GF hydrograph.  Lots of numbers...Until April 10 there’s still ice cover on the river, by April 16 the flow’s nearly tripled, April 17 still ice, mostly clear with VERY HIGH VELOCITIES, April 19 BREAK OUT FLOW GOING OVER LEEVES AND THRU CITY.  That’s the scientific equivalent of a 96 point headline.  And 60,000 people's lives turned upside down.

The Grand Forks Herald arrives that I’d ordered a week ago.  It seems as if it’s from another century.

Centreville, VA Tuesday April 29, 1997 9:30 p.m.
Duane calls.  The water’s receded enough so that the city allowed homeowners to return for a few daylight hours.  We have seven feet of water in the basement.  Funny, but this is good news--we don’t have first floor damage!  The electric box and hot water heater are dead and the basement will need ‘gutting,’ flood parlance for ripping out everything but the concrete walls, wiring and studs.  But less likely to be condemned.

Duane plans on returning tomorrow to begin the slow job of getting the equivalent of  three swimming pools of flood water out of both our basements.  It has to be done in stages, so walls don’t collapse from a sudden change in pressure.  The average person in Grand Forks must, overnight, become structural engineers.  Duane said the National Guard came through the neighborhood about 5 p.m. on April 19 and told everyone to leave.  There was no water yet, but people left.  He returned an hour later --the water was coming.  That’s when he gave up.

It will take weeks for the city to get the contaminated water system operating.  The power and phone systems are also damaged.  We set a time table for ourselves:  We will leave for the ‘Forks as soon as the city water’s turned back on.  I begin to gather and borrow things we’ll need: extension cords, a vacuum cleaner, a wet vac, several industrial fans, tools, rubber hip boots (we kept them from the last flood!) my photo equipment.  It feels as if we’re going on an expedition up the Amazon.  In fact I forget crucial things, such as electric room heaters, camping flashlights, a transistor radio.  We also should have gotten a cell phone before we left. 

The really crucial things I don’t forget such as arranging for our oldest daughter Anna to fly up from Galveston, TX, with our two grandsons, Sebastian, 5 and James 4.  The boys will have to miss the last two weeks of preschool.  But Claire and Molly will be able to stay in Virginia. Our network of friends and neighbors all offer to help Anna, who's agreed to suddenly take care of four children in an unfamiliar place.  And this is just the beginning...

Continued in Red River Rising, Part 2

Red River Rising Part 2

Flood and fire damaged downtown Grand Forks, one block from the Red River  May 1997

Heading to North Dakota, via St. Louis, Missouri 
Thursday May 16, 1997

 
We visit my mother in St. Louis on our way to the ‘Forks. She’s recovering from cancer surgery

. 

We also visit my brother Mark, a master carpenter, who will join us in Grand  Forks to rehab after we get the basement gutted.

As we neared the North Dakota border we became part of a huge convoy of power line and telecommunication trucks, lumber, plywood, Walmart and grocery chain semis, etc., all heading for the damaged cities. 

Grand Forks, ND Thursday May 16, 1997

We arrive in Grand Forks about 2 p.m.  Dreary and overcast. As we drive through the newer western part of the city, farthest from the river, we pass motels, a lumber yard, strip malls and Columbia Mall. They all look dirty, like there had been a terrible dust storm, caking everything with North Dakota gumbo, but as soon as we turn onto Columbia Road heading north we see bright blue porta-pottys at almost every corner, then by 17th Avenue South we see the trash--a long snaking curbside mountain range lining every street like a macabre highlight pen, outlining the whole city.  Welcome to Floodville.

We get behind Army Corps of Engineers dump trucks and pay loaders scooping up couches, sandbags, water heaters, bathtubs and baby beds. Finally we turn onto Fallcreek Court and see our house.  It has the ubiquitous trashy highlight but otherwise it looks oddly normal.

Two Grand Forks Herald’s spill out from the storm door, like we’ve just gone away for a holiday weekend.  Then the first evidence hits us--a city electrical inspection form stating that the power box has been replaced. We’d arranged with Duane, to pay $1200 for a 200 amp box, the flood rate.  We open the door and see a trail of black mud caked on the beige carpet to the basement door.  Our renter’s furniture is stacked neatly along the far wall of the living room.  We step in.  The basement door is closed.  Think B horror movies when the audience shouts, “No! Don’t open that door!”  We open the door, just like they always do in the movies, and down the stairs we go.

It’s dark, cold too, and there’s a heavy moldy smell. This is what a dying building feels like.  No boogy man leaps out to grab us, it’s more pernicious than that.  If the devil had an ice box this would be it.  We walk around in the half light.  At the south side of the house the tongue and groove maple floor is raised up, like a fun house floor, further disorienting us, we bounce on the bubbled floor, it’s a good foot higher in the middle than the rest of the flooring.  We say nothing.

We go back upstairs.  There’s a beeping outside, it’s the Red Cross Mobile Chow Van.  We line up with neighbors, they know we’re just back.  We receive meal packs and they tell us where to get clean-up kits, and free water.  We try eating the food but it’s awful.  There are Oreos and potato chips too, that the Red Cross woman calls comfort foods.  We're not used to eating that either.
                

Jim receiving Red Cross clean up kits, Grand Forks Armory parking lot

We go to the Piggly Wiggly grocery store and buy a dozen yogurts, bananas, apples and oranges.  Thank you! semi supply convoys! Next stop: the Armory for the Red Cross buckets and clean up kits plus a case of bottled water.  We don’t drink any city water for the next month, bottled water’s available free all over town.  We find a pay phone and call home.  We talk to each child.  Their voices are excited but calming, we step into their world, like slipping into a warm bath.  We put on our Mommy/Daddy/Grandma/Granddad hats as we ohh and ahhh over small victories and help arbitrate territorial disputes, plus getting the low down on who’s been to visit.

When we get home Jim goes downstairs and begins whacking out soggy drywall, which lightening up the basement, so it’s no longer so dark.  I cannot go back downstairs.  Instead I wet vac the mud trail 10 times over the next few days, boiling pots of water for each application.  I obsessively clean the upstairs until it reaches a hospital operating room sheen, anything, so I don’t have to go downstairs again.  It’s a completely schizophrenic house with a hyper clean upstairs, death’s door devastation downstairs.  Around 6 p.m. we change clothes and drive through Lincoln Park on our way downtown.  Those houses are like our basement but above ground, times 30 square blocks.  It looks like photos of bombed out Beirut.  Others are walking around taking photos too.  This journey through the carnage is something I repeat every day for the next month.

Grand Forks, ND Saturday May 17
The newspaper says there will be a big Missouri Cattleman’s B-B-Q at  South Forks Mall this evening, Salvation Army entrance.  Naomi and her daughter pick us up and we head over.  Grace is said for hundreds of people snaking around the mall in a long queue, manned by incredibly well-organized Missourians.  We see folks we haven’t seen in years.  An announcement squawks over the p.a. that the buses are now leaving for the airport for hundreds of Twin City volunteers Northwest Airlines flew up to help out, gratis.  

Continued in Red River Rising, Part 3

Red River Rising Part 3

Our daughter Anna, Sourlie Bridge, Grand Forks 1979 flood

Sunday May 18
It’s dreary again, raining.  Jim and I meet Naomi, her daughter and Janette at Wesley United Methodist Church for 10 a.m. services.  The church wasn’t structurally damaged but the furnace isn’t working and electrical current is bornderline.  The carpeting is ruined and of course basement drywall gone.  Someone has improvised lighting with ubiquitous extension cords, essential in the windowless sanctuary, a common North Dakota church style--less expensive to heat.  Pastor James Persons leads us in prayer and song before reading letters of support from all over the country.

Then the lights conk out.  We sit there, numb in the cold dark sanctuary, with faint light filtering seeping in from the hall.  We were in a damaged church, in a broken city, with everyone somehow affected by the brutality of the flood.  Then someone lights the candles and the room comes to life.  Pastor Persons prays for us, the city, our future.  The electric lights flicker back on.  I never felt the presence of God so much as in that dark interlude.

During prayer requests, of which there were many, Naomi asks if anyone could help us tackle our basement cleanup.  That’s when we meet Jim and Mary Antes.  He’s a psychology professor at the university, she works for the public schools.  They agree to meet at our house at 1 p.m., after we have breakfast.

Perkins Restaurant is packed.  No damage, it’s on the right side of the line of the unflooded.  It’s a pretend world, so normal looking, so removed from the shrill blue porta potties, the trash.  It could have been any Sunday, in any city in America.

At 1 p.m. Jim and Mary were waiting for us.  They teach us their 50 gallon trash can clean-up method.  They’d already cleared out their own basement and several of their friends.  We all put on the stuff:  Rubber boots, gloves, face masks and extra long sleeve shirts and pants (it’s still cold, and the heat’s not on, because there's no power on in the basement, only 40% upstairs.  The temperature is around 45-50 degrees).  Then we descend into the moldy gloom to face the five foot high mounds of soggy drywall Jim’s spent the past two days hacking off the studs.

Cleanup routine, from a Minot ND blogger, except we used a 50 gallon plastic trash can to transfer garbage bags to the 'mound'

All afternoon we shovel drywall into the plastic bag-lined trash cans, then two of us take turns carrying it up the mountainous stairs and out to the berm.  About 4 p.m. I make us coffee in the kitchen and we talk of family and our lives like old friends at a cocktail party.  Then we put our gloves and masks back on and returned down to ‘Pit, which is what Jim’s now calling the basement, like a Yorkshire miner.  Jim and I would have quit after an hour of this dire routine but Jim and Mary keep us going.

We finish about 6 p.m. The neatly swept basement floor is empty of drywall.  not cheerful but progress.  We remove the filthy outer layer of our clothing wash our hands and hug goodbye.  Mary and Jim drive off into the fading day like soft-spoken angels.

Naomi and a friend of hers stop by.  We show them the progress in our basement.  Naomi’s house was built around 1900 so the basement walls are stone, so no drywall to remove but she lost her furnace, washer, hot water heater,  and most painful of all, most of her photo negatives, all soaked in floodwater for over a week.  One of the radio stations devotes mornings to the county extension agents answering clean-up questions such as what can and can’t be salvaged, how to clean silver, rinse negatives, old photos, clothes, etc. 'Wonder if the BBC had such advice during the Blitz?  Their voices are oddly soothing,-an-anything-is-possible-calming antidote to cold reality.

Monday May 19, 9 a.m.
There’s no way Jim and I alone will be able to rip out tons of waterlogged maple flooring, at least not within the next 6 months.  When I drive over to Sears to check on delivery of our new water heater I see a huge DISASTER RELIEF sign outside the Federated Church on 17th Avenue South.  Anna went to their summer day camp years ago.  I go in, passing the huge Disaster Response semi in the parking lot. 

There are dozens of neatly made sleeping bags arranged like spokes in the round sanctuary.  There are three people in the office, one answering the phones.  I explain my dilemma.  I talk to Southern Baptist volunteer Dan Vietto from St. Louis.  He shows me around their Disaster Relief semi.  it looks like an army troop plane, with fold down cots, a kitchenette, the works.  Dan tells me to call Wanda, also with the Southern Baptists, from Kentucky.  She’s in charge of matching volunteers with people who need help but we probably won’t see anyone until weekend, when most volunteers come up from the Twin Cities.  This sounds too miraculous.

When I return home Jim and I can't get the washer out of the basement. But I get an idea.  We’ll take it apart, and remove it in pieces!  We spend an hour just getting the top off, all the screws are rusted as it sat in floodwater for 10 days. We’ve no power tools. ‘Should have brought wrenches. I go upstairs for a drink of water and see an appliance delivery truck outside the minister’s house across the street, delivering their new washer and dryer.  I fly out the door and ask them if they can help us get our washer out of the basement after they deliver the appliances.

Bill and his buddy are young guys up from Chicago helping deliver 50,000 new appliances from Rollin’s Appliance Company.  With their dolly they look like they’re lifting a box of books as they haul the washer out of our basement and onto the berm.  I try and try again to pay for for being right outside our door when we needed them most but they refuse to take my money.  I wonder if they haveve any idea how long I will remember their generosity?

Our last visit with Janette, October 2016, at Perkins Pancake House.  Sadly the world lost one of its saints as Janette died this past spring.  We will never forget her generosity and calm cando

Tuesday May 20
‘Tried calling Wanda.  No answer.  I go to Piggly Wiggly for more food.  run into Naomi's mom, Janette, and she invites us to dinner.  Her place is full of her best friend’s silver, which Janette’s 'flood cleaning.'  She’s a retired public health nurse.  She’s lived most recently on the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation in South Dakota.  She treats us to a real meal, not Red Cross food!  And sends us home with homemade bread, brownies and banana nut bread.  Also a Reader’s Digest How to Fix Anything book.

We go over to Mark and Linda’s to take a shower, as we’d arranged earlier.  We feel civilized again.  Hot Water!  Afterwards we have a beer in their living room, while we wash clothes--all the locals are a week ahead of us in cleaning up and getting back to normal.  We share the couch with Mark’s 10 point mounted buck.  Other trophies are scattered on every surface. There’s a narrow path through the living room, which has absorbed all the family room furniture.  It’s their daughter Kelly’s senior year in high school. Instead of a fancy party at home they’ll be celebrating at a local hotel on Saturday.
                                              

Our Grand Forks house basement before 1997 flood

Flashback 1978 During our first year in our brand new house on Fallcreek Court in Grand Forks we watched Linda and Mark’s good size rock collection grow along the edge of their driveway, carefully selected from the bumper crop at their nearby family farm. Those rocks became the focal point of their family room's floor-to-ceiling, hand-faced, stone fireplace that Mark built in their basement.  Flanking that fireplace was the old growth maple flooring that we gave them from our basement project, using reclaimed wood we located at a farm in Dorothy, Minnesota.

Salvaged clawfoot bathtub and pedestal sink, English wallpapered bathroom

 When we decided to make our basement into a family room in 1981, Mark did all the carpentry.  We put an ad in the Herald for used wood flooring, a claw foot bathtub and pedestal sink.  All of which we found.  The wood was the gem of the project:$100 for about 4000 square feet.  School friend Bob Nelson drove us out in his pick-up on a spring day to Boyle’s Farm, near Dorothy, Minnesota.  A more graceful pick-up ride I can’t recall.  That wood changed me

basement stairway

 The maple was from old growth Minnesota forests and was in the township’s one-room schoolhouse.  When that was demolished, Mr. Boyle saved the wood, removing all the nails, the hardest part, I suspect, of saving all that wood.  He stored it on wooden pallets and under tarps in his farmyard along with his retired John Deere’s, old Fords and washing machines--the farm's spare parts' mine.

Salvaged wood door frames and flooring

 Mark and his friend Gary salvaged three vintage doors and doorways from an abandoned farmhouse on a friend’s farm which was the finishing touch.  We created the quintessential North Dakota space--salvaged artifacts of the original European style architecture on the Northern Plains.  Of all our homes over the years, decorated houses, special rooms and gardens, this basement was the most ‘us.’  We worked the hardest to finish it, even sanded the floor, now that’s hard work.  It was our equivalent of Mark and Linda’s fireplace.  We gave Mark and Gary the left over wood, which was enough to finish their family rooms too. 

All the wood’s now gone with the flood waters. Mark and Linda are unable to use their fireplace.  There’s no way of knowing if the firewall was damaged and if it was, nothing short of removing a basement wall can fix it.  Floods erase everything.  Mike Jacobs, editor of the Grand Forks Herald, lost one of the finest collections in the state of first edition books about North Dakota history.  He helped the Herald staff earn the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service but I know he'd trade that in a heartbeat for his beloved books that chronicled the state's history.


Wednesday May 21
I get a hold of Wanda.  She hopes she can get a volunteer crew over to our house on Saturday.

Thursday May 22
Another day of toil and trouble in Floodville, plus Red Cross food.  After three or four hours of carefully picking drywall remains from the edges of the ceiling and scrubbing flood mud Red Cross food is starting to get rather tasty. It’s also amazing how the food line social scene enhances the grub.

Anna calls.  Molly’s sick.  She’s glassy-eyed and has a 101 degree temp.  I call good friend Allet, an RN.  She swoops into action.  Strep’s going around, so she runs over to check Molly out.  It’s after 5 p.m. so she takes Molly to Fair Oaks Hospital.  Yep, it’s strep all right.  Not much sleep this night.

Friday May 23
'Call Anna early. Molly's medicated and feeling better.  Now four-year old James isn’t feeling well.  By some miracle he’s o.k. by mid-morning, no more fever, back to bouncing off the walls.  Thank you God for small mercies and for friends and family.  It’s the Girl Scout Awards Ceremony tonight.  Our Grand Forks house phone’s not working.

Several businesses host a BBQ at the University football stadium.  It’s sunny but cool.  We share another outdoor meal with several thousand, and heartfelt prayers from wise pastors.  After we eat we drive downtown to the Security Building site.  Naomi and I became friends while doing a documentary project for one of Harley Straus’ photography classes, we spent hours photographing downtown Grand Forks. I find a stone dentil that’s charred from the fire, Naomi’s daughter wants to take it home, we gather other stones from the rubble, hand carved sandstone from another era, put them in the van then drive home.

Continued in Red River Rising, Part 4