A special Mainstreet Radio report from East Grand Forks, a year after the severe spring 1997 flood. MPR’s Laura McCallum interviews current and former residents of Lincoln Drive about their experience in the aftermath of disaster. Some have rebuilt; others have moved away.
The Red River flood of 1997 was a major flood that occurred in April and May 1997 along the Red River of the North in Minnesota, North Dakota, and southern Manitoba. The flood was the result of abundant snowfall and extreme temperatures. It was the most severe flood of the river since 1826. Water spread throughout the Red River Valley and affected the cities of Fargo and Winnipeg…but the greatest impact was in Grand Forks and East Grand Forks, where floodwaters reached more than 3 miles inland. Damages in the Red River region totaled $3.5 billion. As a result of the 1997 flood and its extensive property losses, the United States and state governments made additional improvements to the flood protection system in North Dakota and Minnesota, creating dike systems.
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SPEAKER: On April 22, 1997, thousands of people chased from their homes by the surging Red River pressed into a hangar at the Grand Forks Air Force base to hear President Clinton offer words of comfort and support.
BILL CLINTON: We have hardly ever seen such a remarkable demonstration of courage and commitment and cooperation and basic human strength. And we are very impressed and proud to be Americans when we see what you have done in the face of--
[CHEERS, APPLAUSE]
SPEAKER: In the audience, three neighbors listened-- John Little, Pat Moen, and Susan Cutshall. All lived within a few blocks of one another. All three fled Grand Forks as the Red River spilled over dikes and poured into their homes, after rising high above National Weather Service projections to crest at 54 feet, 26 feet above flood stage.
The Moens and Cutshalls lived on Lincoln Drive, their backyards bordering the river. John Little's house stood a couple of blocks away on Chestnut. There was a sense of comfort, even relief, in the air base hangar, a huge change from the confusion and terror described in the pages of Susan Cutshall's diary in the days leading up to the president's visit.
SUSAN CUTSHALL: April 17, '97, it happened in the afternoon. The dike had four cracks at the end of Lincoln Drive. Siren blew. Police came, guards, fire trucks, helicopters. And I broke down. We packed clothes and cleared out the refrigerator. Move over to 207 Chestnut, where we thought we would be safe.
1:15, Friday, we heard on the radio that the Lincoln gave in. It's filling up. Lincoln Lagoon, they call it. We walked all the way home, not knowing what to expect. Two houses from us, you can see the water coming up. Tears fell down my cheeks. And the guard stopped us. And I said, no, that's our house.
I got up at 4:30, Friday. The sirens are going off. The phones are ringing. The woman I was staying with, Mary Ann Ellen, woke me up and says, that was a call for prayer. We did. And all I could do is imagine everybody praying to God to stop these waters because we can't. We tried.
We went through town very, very slow, creeping. We were still scared because if that engine stalled, we're right in the middle of it. We thought we were going to air base. Instead, we went to Faith Community Church on the other side. And we thought we were safe.
We got up at 7:00 AM to find out the water's getting closer and closer. So here we are doing it again. And we went for shelter at the air base. And I told my husband, if it comes out this far, I'm leaving the whole state. I've had enough. I can't run away anymore.
SPEAKER: By the time President Clinton toured Grand Forks, the Cutshalls and their neighbor John Little had been staying on canvas cots at the base for three days. Little, a wiry man with a shock of curly hair, moved to Grand Forks in 1969, but you'd never know it to hear his Southern accent. The University of North Dakota English professor fully expected to be at the base another week or two.
JOHN LITTLE: I don't think the river is going to be going down much in a week. And I do enjoy it visiting. And I'm enjoying watching the people. But it would be nice to take a shower.
SPEAKER: Little had heard the gurgle of his basement filling the night before he evacuated. And like many at the base, he wasn't sure what condition his home would be in when he returned. But Pat Moen already knew floodwaters reached the rooftop of her two-story home. Her husband, a Grand Forks police officer, patrolled the area. Moen knew they would not return to 501 Lincoln Drive.
PAT MOEN: It's hard. In Lincoln Drive area, that whole neighborhood is a real close neighborhood. So it's hard.
SPEAKER: Three weeks later, mid-May, Moen's neighborhood is deserted, the only sound-- a wind chime still hanging in her backyard. Some nearby homes were forced off their foundations by the force of the floodwater. Moen's blue 75-year-old home is marked off by yellow police tape.
Inside, floors have buckled. Half-dried mud is peeling off the kitchen counters. And her refrigerator is toppled over. Moen can't spend any time there. The home's musty flood smell brings on her asthma. At a restaurant on the other side of town, Moen says her neighborhood is destroyed.
PAT MOEN: And I look at my neighbor's houses and I cry. It's hard.
SPEAKER: It's quiet in Grand Forks now that the Red River is back within its banks. As residents return to their homes in the days following the flood, many directed their anger at the National Weather Service for its inaccurate prediction of the river's crest. An army of volunteers is still helping with disaster relief in Grand Forks. But the satellite farms of the TV crews have withered away almost to nothing. And the visits by national politicians have stopped.
Pat Moen and her husband Jim are staying with her mother in a two-bedroom trailer. They've decided to move to North Carolina, where their daughter lives, when Jim retires from the police department in January. The Cutshalls, who lived a few blocks away on higher ground, are renting a rundown trailer in nearby Emerado, not sure whether to clean up their house, which got about a foot of water on the main floor, or wait for a possible buyout.
Both the Moens' and Cutshalls' homes are on what's called the wet, or wrong side of a proposed new dike. City officials are considering to protect Grand Forks from future floods, although it isn't likely to be built for several years. Only John Little is living in his home again.
When Little's small, dark basement flooded, a brick wall caved in. But the water didn't reach his main floor. Little knows he was fortunate. But he did spend a miserable five days pumping out his basement without the benefit of heat, running water, or electricity.
JOHN LITTLE: That might have been one of the worst weeks of my life, working in that dungeon with that muck. And there's no easy way to-- no way to glamorize what it was like in that basement. I had a Coleman lantern and a flashlight and a squeegee board and a push broom and a 5-gallon bucket so that you were just hauling that muck out of there.
SPEAKER: Little is glad to be back in his two-story home, which he's been restoring for more than a decade. One of his teenage twin sons lives here, too. The 58-year-old English professor has long planned to stay until he retires to his home state of Mississippi in a few years.
He admits he's second-guessed himself a few times, not because of the flood, but because he didn't apply soon enough to get any of the so-called angel money. An anonymous donor pledged $15 million to Grand Forks flood victims to be distributed in no-strings-attached $2,000 grants. Little says he put off applying because he hates filling out forms and standing in line. And now the money's gone.
JOHN LITTLE: Everything that the city said and that I heard through the grapevine led me to believe that you didn't have to rush to get the money. I thought it was guaranteed. So I felt like they had misled me. And it made me bitter enough. I'm ashamed to say that I thought, I don't want to be here anymore. But I've since backed off of that, now that you have time to think about it.
SPEAKER: Little is also working on a novel about, ironically, North Dakotans who lost their homes to a reservoir. It's early July, nearly three months after the flood. Lincoln Drive is still devastated. Little has changed here, except now a few barren lots are evidence Grand Forks has begun tearing down houses.
The city council has approved the first phase of a plan to buy out flood-damaged homes. Officials delayed the decision until Congress approved a disaster relief bill, allocating more than $1 billion to Minnesota and the Dakotas. The latest damage estimate for Grand Forks alone is more than $500 million.
The Cutshalls have decided to buy a new house 17 miles away in Emerado, far from the flood-prone river. Sitting in front of 7 Lincoln Drive, Dennis Cutshall is resigned to leaving the place they called home for almost a decade and a half.
DENNIS CUTSHALL: That's what kept us here, was the neighborhood. And I guess that's finally what's making us decide to leave because the neighborhood is going to be gone. Even if our house stayed, the neighborhood's gone. It's an old-fashioned type of neighborhood, where you could sit out and wave at people. And kids would play in their bikes and everything. It's going to be tough to leave that.