Today in History revisits an article from April 3, 1999, highlighting the resilience and struggles of Grand Forks residents as they faced another round of Red River flooding in 1999, just two years after the devastating flood of 1997. Read the full story below.
Flooding tests strength of residents
Two years ago (1997), the Red River was lapping at the living room windows at Jean Dunham’s house on the south side of Grand Forks.
Friday (April 2, 1999), it was creeping back up her backyard again.
“We didn’t even know if we were going to rebuild,” said Dunham, who moved out of her home two Aprils ago in a duck boat. “The city really discouraged us from coming back, because we’re the lowest house left in town.”
But she, her husband, their seven kids, Jean’s mom, and the family dog are sitting tight this time. Where a dike of 16,000 sandbags stood in 1997, there now is a 4-foot high grassy dike.
And no small amount of faith.
“It sounds funny to say it, but I think we really are thankful for the flood,” Dunham said, with her family gathered at home for the Easter holiday. “I think it really was a good thing for our family, to see how God can provide — even in a flood.”
Disappointment, pent-up anger
But elsewhere in the valley, as the Red River is spilling its banks again, faith is in shorter supply.
“I think there’s a lot of disappointment out there, a lot of pent-up anger,” said Lee Lipp, a Grand Forks clinical psychologist who helped start a federally funded disaster counseling program two years ago.
An ice storm Friday closed roads, knocked out power, and prompted a run on stocks of rubber drain plugs — used to prevent sewer backups — at local hardware stores. The grocery stores are jammed, and state officials say they’re even getting a lot of worried calls about the Y2K problem from the area lately.
“By just about any measure of mental health, in fact, I think things have gotten worse here,” Lipp says. “Domestic violence is up. Attorneys tell me they think divorce is up. We’re hearing more problems with drinking and chemical abuse. We don’t have any hard data on it yet, but I think people still aren’t over what happened.”
“We had a 46-foot flood in 1996, and people didn’t even realize it was happening,” Grand Forks city engineer Ken Vein said. “But that isn’t going to happen again.”
Which isn’t to say they won’t get over it, eventually.
Making peace with the river
Jean Dunham says she thinks the people of Grand Forks have started to make some peace with the river, if not themselves: “I think it was a real awakening,” Dunham says. “I think it really made people think about what’s important.”
Attendance at her church has doubled since the flood, for instance. She still marvels at the people that came to help, like a group from a church in Iowa that just showed up and Sheetrocked her basement one day.
“And I still love living here, beside the river,” she says. “I love watching the seasons change, I love to see the sun coming up over the water. I still don’t want to leave.”
Our newsroom occasionally reports stories under a byline of “staff.” Often, the “staff” byline is used when rewriting basic news briefs that originate from official sources, such as a city press release about a road closure, and which require little or no reporting. At times, this byline is used when a news story includes numerous authors or when the story is formed by aggregating previously reported news from various sources. If outside sources are used, it is noted within the story.