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| Sourlie Bridge, Grand Forks, ND (Grand Forks Herald) |
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.
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| 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.
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| Downtown Grand Forks, ND April 19, 1997 (St. Paul Pioneer Press) |
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.
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.
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| 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
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