wfn.org | Red River Flood Victims

[PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org]

30-April-1997 
97184 
 
                   Red River Flood Victims Say  
                  Recovery Will Take a Long Time 
 
                          by Alexa Smith 
 
LOUISVILLE, Ky.--The Rev. Jim DeSmidt of East Grand Forks, Minn., gave his 
wife, Jean, flood insurance for Valentine's Day this year.  That's what 
she'd been saying she wanted. 
 
     When the flooded Red River swamped the city's sandbagged dikes on 
April 18, he was glad he had.  "When I went to see the insurance agent, he 
said,  If you get water in your house, the whole town is going to be 
under.' 
 
     "He was right," said DeSmidt, just hours after making his first foray 
into his 10th Avenue home to yank up ruined carpet from the two basement 
bedrooms.  He then headed back to the countryside, where two elders of 
Mendenhall Presbyterian Church have been housing the DeSmidts since the 
flood hit.  
 
     That day the Red River, which separates East Grand Forks, Minn., and 
Grand Forks, N.D., overwhelmed the city's floodwalls and eroded temporary 
dikes neighbors had been constructing along the cities' streets, causing 
mandatory evacuation of 90 percent of East Grand Forks' 9,000 residents and 
Grand Forks' 50,000.  
 
     "Ten percent or more of  the state's population is now homeless 
because of the flood.  I've never seen that kind of [loss of homes] in any 
state in any disaster," said the Rev. Dick Krajeski of Mannington, W.Va., 
who is one of the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance Team (PDAT) members now 
working in North Dakota. 
 
     "As big as [Hurricane] Andrew was in Florida, only a small percent of 
the population was homeless ... and some people here are forced to live 
hours away from their homes.  There's not [temporary] housing available." 
 
     So the Presbyterian ministers in both cities -- who are evacuees 
themselves -- are trying to locate scattered members of the Mendenhall 
Church in East Grand Forks and First Presbyterian Church in Grand Forks, 
both congregations of approximately 400 members. The Mendenhall Church is 
now meeting at First Presbyterian Church in Crookston, Minn., 27 miles 
away.  Some members of the Grand Forks congregation gathered April 27 at 
the Gilby Presbyterian Church, 25 miles northwest of the city.  The next 
night other members congregated in Fargo.  The Rev. Gretchen Graf, pastor 
of First Church, Grand Forks, is living currently with two other families, 
three dogs and two cats in the Sunday school rooms of the Gilby church. 
 
     "Mostly people were saying  This is where So-and-so is living.  I do 
or I don't have a house. I do or I don't have a job,'" said Graf, 
describing the prayer service at the Gilby church just after the flood. 
She estimated that only two or three of First Church's 400 members have not 
been affected by the flooding.  "I just don't know how many ... are getting 
back into their houses. 
 
     "[Most] of us have been away from home a week," Graf said. "And all 
we've seen are pictures on television of our neighborhoods.  It's going to 
be at least three weeks before water service is restored in the city -- and 
then it won't be drinkable." 
 
     Graf said she's been told water is up the rafters in First Church's 
basement, though no water has been reported in the sanctuary. She said the 
church opted not to buy $4,000 flood insurance earlier this spring since 
the building is not in the floodplain.  "We never dreamed it would get to 
this elevation," she said.  Record flooding was expected because of heavy 
winter snows,  "so residents built the dikes three feet higher than the 
previous record flood, three feet higher than the crest was predicted. 
Then it crested two feet higher than that.   
 
     "Thousands of people are not insured for this," Graf said, "based on 
wise decisions that people made.  They just turned out to be wrong." 
 
     DeSmidt said six and a half feet of water filled Mendenhall's 
basement, inundating the furnace, the organ blower and the kitchen. 
Another one and a half feet seeped into offices, classrooms and an elevator 
in a new addition that was due to be paid off with a final $300,000 
mortgage payment later this month.  DeSmidt said the church is waiting to 
see if its insurance will cover flooding, since the building is not in the 
floodplain.  "It could have been a lot worse," said DeSmidt. 
 
     "Nobody's dead.  That's what we're all grateful for."  DeSmidt 
estimates that 250 of Mendenhall's members are impacted by the flood. 
 
     The shock of several years of repeated heavy blizzards followed by 
springtime flooding is beginning to take an emotional toll.  Ranchers are 
reporting heavy losses of lambs and calves.  Farmers are waiting for the 
Red River Valley to dry out before even contemplating spring planting.   
 
     "The whole economy is thrown off by that," said the Rev. Sherwood 
McKay, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Crookston, which has been 
housing as many as 65 people in its Sunday school and choir rooms since the 
flood.  "It's been a cumulative buffeting of the psyche," he said, adding 
that longtime residents say they cannot remember another winter when North 
Dakota was hit by anything like 1997's eight certified blizzards.  
 
     "And some people are going to leave," McKay said.  "Some people's 
houses are completely inundated.  The city is starting to worry, in fact, 
that 30 percent may leave.  There's going to be grief related to that. 
Very few things will be the same.  The city will, temporarily at least, be 
decimated." 
 
     Graf said that sense of loss is already being felt, since 11 buildings 
burned in Grand Forks' downtown in the midst of the flood.  Right now, she 
said, locals are fighting fatigue, since the community worked so hard for 
weeks to sandbag the city, only to watch their efforts fail. 
 
     Krajeski said outside work groups will probably be needed in cities 
like Fargo, N.D., and Breckinridge, Minn., relatively soon.  But there is 
no place in Grand Forks or East Grand Forks to house or shelter volunteers. 
"Groups ought to plan on late spring and summer," he said.  "There's going 
to be a lot of rebuilding to do.  But people should think seriously about 
sending money donations [now]. Money is going to be in short supply." 
 
     Graf said that spending relief dollars to buy supplies in the local 
economy is one way to begin bolstering its recovery.  "We will pull 
together and we will rebuild," she said, citing the sentiments of her 
congregation.  "Things will get better ... but it's really awful right 
now." 
 
     To date, $10,000 in One Great Hour of Sharing monies have been sent to 
the Presbytery of the Northern Plains, where both Grand Forks and East 
Grand Forks are located.  Ten thousand dollars each have been sent for 
flood relief to the presbyteries of Minnesota Valleys and South Dakota as 
well. 
 
     A churchwide mailing is being developed about 1997 flooding, according 
to Stan Hankins of Presbyterian Disaster Assistance.  Account #9-2000135 
has been established for relief money for Midwest flooding in the Northern 
Plains as well as in the Ohio River Valley, which occurred in March. 

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