1997 Flood

[zoops]

20 years ago today that the dikes gave way in Grand Forks. One of those days for me where you remember where you were and can still remember very vividly although I was only 14. I'll post more memories when I have more time but figured I'd see what other memories people have from that flood.

 

[deleted member]

i was there. my girlfriend was on a 3rd floor apartment downtown that survived the fire. mine was a ground level on north 6th a few blocks from riverside park. we put everything we could fit on the countertops and the kitchen table. it all survived. left town. took a road trip to san antonio and the gulf coast. watched it all unfold on TV for the most part. was bummed my roommate didn't get the angel $ application in. i could have really used the $500 when i got back.

i also bartended at the highlander in those days. for some odd reason, i left my car there the night before we left. might have been drunk. nevertheless, i didn't get back to it for 2-3 weeks. got wet. but, not too wet. think the floors got just a little water in them. drove that thing for another 4-5 years with a canoe on top until a nice buck eventually ended its run.

to this day, i have my doubts that amount of water would stay between the current dikes and walls under the conditions we saw that spring. but, i will trust the experts on this one.

 

[Rowdie]

It wouldn't

 

[Allen]

I was in El Forke Grande during the flood as well. Lived in married student housing (man am I glad that part of life is done for me!), and had an office in the basement of Leonard Hall. After bagging dikes for many days, a couple friends decided we had had enough and talked me into an impromptu trip to Little Missouri Bay state park after a few beers. In the morning, we woke up and went to a small café in Killdeer. My friends being non-Dakotans had a bit of an east coast accent and the waitress asked where they were from, they said "Grand Forks". She was amazed that we had made it out that far, so fast. We were like, ehh...what? Turns out that was the morning they issued the evac order as the dikes got overtopped. It was the first we had heard, so we rushed back to Grand Forks and had to really talk nice to get into town so we could get more than the overnight's worth of clothes we had. I grabbed a 6-pack of beer and sat on the Columbia overpass drinking it while watching the Guard trucks trudging through water on Demers and helicopters dropping water buckets on downtown as it burned.

I eventually packed up some stuff and went farming for a few weeks. Then came back to salvage what I could from my office. Thankfully, my apartment was high and dry. Only spent a couple days back in GF before having to head to the Black Hills for a geology field camp.

Good times!

 

[fly2cast]

I was just back to Grand Forks two weeks ago. First time since I graduated from UND in 1993. Still the craphole I remember and the roads apparently haven't been fixed since then.

 

[JCNodak]

This was my first year away at college (Mayville State). I came home and helped friends move stuff upstairs and helped sandbag until my arms wanted to fall off. Didn't think much about our place because we are higher than most. Needless to say I was wrong. Only our basement got it so we were lucky in that respect but as most teenaged males, my room was in the basement. A lot of friends lost more. I was so impressed with what the guard did that I eventually ended up joining.

 

[dean nelson]

Remember the first day they people were let back in and helped my sister get her stuff out of delta Gama and had not been in there before. We were the first ones back and I remember looking over the railing trying to figure out why they had such a deep basement as the stairway kept going down two levels and then I suddenly realized I was looking at the reflection of the stairwell above me and if the entire lower level is completely flooded. It was really eerie sitting on the corner of Columbia and University as a stoplight slowly flashed and there was no traffic anywhere not a car to be seen other then the odd ones drifted up into the yards where they had floated to. The silence those couple hours was just eerie with no cars no birds nothing just the clicking of the stoplight. After a couple hours more people started coming into town and it was weird to see it go from a ghost town with no tracks in the river mud that was drying out everywhere to cars rolling by nearly nonstop in an ungodly dust cloud. The day of the flood was probably the creepiest I've ever heard the tornado sirens sound.

 

[lunkerslayer]

That was the biggest cluster fuck in the history of monitoring river flow. The ACOE personal should have been arrested for being stupid. But hey it also could of been done by design. If you lived if GF in 1979 you knew it was going to flood.
Even after the levee broke the river elevation kept coming up, also I requested when the levee breaks by zeplin
I didn't take the angel money but I think i heard it was from Mrs crock of mcdees

 

[Rowdie]

That was my 1st year teaching in ND. I also removed asbestos in the summer back then. I even took two years off of college to make some $$ doing that shit. So that summer, 1997, I was stuck in that shithole of GF ND. I don't mind it when its normal, but we were the first ones to be in the areas we were in since we had to clean out the hazardous asbestos 1st. Man what some crap jobs we landed. Didn't get any of the burned ones thank god. I power washed tunnels at UND, after cleaning them out and tearing off all the asbestos insulation. The hotels were a trip. All construction guys, with a bunch of Mexicans/Pan-Americans. Guys just left their doors open like a dorm in college. Smoke filled the hallways and you could definitely smell pot smoke every night. Won a lot of cash in some poker games. There were some guys that were so stupid they should not be playing poker, I'm talking seriously not all there in the head and these guys are basically stealing their money. I think I got a day and a half off in 6 weeks. I think I ordered every menu option at the Speedway. At one time we had guys from 14 different countries on our crew.

Then one day after work we went driving around just checking out the damage. Some A-holes in EastGF started yelling at us to get the F out of there. I was like FU, WTF why don't you come get a job with us so I can go home!

 

[dukgnfsn]

Was there as a National Guard on State Active Duty on the corner of 5th St & Belmount Rd. that day and directed traffic standing in the water with no protection other than my uniform until about 0300 the next morning. Legs were completely numb from being in the cold river water for hours until finally relieved. The next couple days spent driving a 5 ton truck evacuating people from homes and downtown. Then spent next 2 1/2 weeks doing missions of all sorts downtown with guard equipment and local area. Drove Police around in big trucks patrolling and lead the FD in on National Guard flatbeds to fight the Herald fire. Helped pull equipment out of hospital and many missions like that. May have been a lot of 20 years ago but many of the things I done during that three weeks still stand out plain as day. Probably the most amazing thing to me is we lost no lives directly to the flood that I know of. It was pretty amazing to see and something like the last 8 months of DAPL, both are something I never imagined I would ever see in ND and I got to be a player in both of them. MEMORIES.
dukgnfsn

 

[Kurtr]

i was at guard camp in Ripley it was my senior year of high school came home and house in watertown was evacuated mom and dad went to my grandmas and didnt tell me. We were stuck up in Ripley a few extra days the big sioux river was in the back yard and dads boat almost got away. Sewer backed up i got busted at a party that weekend i ended up scraping shit water off all the wall and repainting basement. It was crazy....more lake made in Eastern sd that spring than you could imagine

 

[JCNodak]

Was there as a National Guard on State Active Duty on the corner of 5th St & Belmount Rd. that day and directed traffic standing in the water with no protection other than my uniform until about 0300 the next morning. Legs were completely numb from being in the cold river water for hours until finally relieved. The next couple days spent driving a 5 ton truck evacuating people from homes and downtown. Then spent next 2 1/2 weeks doing missions of all sorts downtown with guard equipment and local area. Drove Police around in big trucks patrolling and lead the FD in on National Guard flatbeds to fight the Herald fire. Helped pull equipment out of hospital and many missions like that. May have been a lot of 20 years ago but many of the things I done during that three weeks still stand out plain as day. Probably the most amazing thing to me is we lost no lives directly to the flood that I know of. It was pretty amazing to see and something like the last 8 months of DAPL, both are something I never imagined I would ever see in ND and I got to be a player in both of them. MEMORIES.
dukgnfsn

It was because of your guys that we didn't lose any lives. I saw that as a 19 year old kid and I was in. Thank you for what you did then and now. I got to somewhat repay that debt as we were at Camp Grafton for a weekend when a large wind storm came through. We went around town clearing the streets and helping people get downed trees out of their yards and off of their houses. It felt good to give back like that after being a GF resident in 97.

 

[fullrut]

I helped a buddy man the pumps for a week at his place on the Red. I launched my boat off an overpass a couple exits north of the Warsaw exit. About 3-4 miles cross country to the river channel. Depth finder showed 54' when I hit the main channel. Sheriff called us everyday to check on us and get a report on the neighbors. Most of the old timers were prepared for it. No shortage of booze and beer. Gas was the only real thing that got scarce.

 

[Allen]

I think my least fond memory was well after the flood. My grad advisor had another student who had to shack up with him because his apartment got flooded. He was driving our advisor nuts, kind of whacky dude to put it nicely. Since I had to go to SD for several weeks, my advisor convinced me to sub out my apartment to the whacky one. I said OK, under the condition that he is absolutely out of my place before I get back. Well, I had to call and remind him a few times before I arrived back in GF that I in no way, shape, or form wanted a roommate.

I get back and he was only partially moved out. A few days pass and I was hungry and thought "hmm, you still have deer sausage left in the freezer". This was an older chest freezer and I popped open the top. At first I was like what the heck are these garbage bags doing in here? They were basically molded to the shape of the freezer and took me a couple of hours to chisel them out. That's when I found out what was in the bags. Remember where I said I had an office in the basement of Leonard Hall, well...so did Capt Weirdo. Leonard Hall ended up having about 30 inches of sewer backed up into it. Yep, the A-hole extraordinaire took all of his books that had been soaked in sewage and put them in my freezer, of course the bags leaked before they froze and now all of the remaining food I had in the freezer were covered in frozen sewage.

Jesus H. Christ if I wasn't pissed!

 

[LBrandt]

Allen, where did you bury the body or just throw in river.

 

[zoops]

My main memories of the pre-flood were what seemed like endless hours both making and laying sandbags. Again I was 14 so had next to no experience with manual labor. I can remember my biceps popping out a bit from all that work. I'm sure between snow days and sandbagging time we had missed 3 weeks of school prior to the flood. I can also remember although it was April 18 or 19 when the water got to our house, we still had 3-4 foot snow drifts in our yard. Lived on the Point area in EGF and was right there working when one of the sandbag dikes failed and water started coming in to neighborhoods. Basically had been sandbagging for a week or 10 days straight with next to no direct supervision - I wonder how that would go nowadays for junior high kids? Being young I don't think I really thought houses would actually flood.
Once the dikes failed, we were isolated on the Point because it's naturally surrounded by rivers/tributaries. The next morning we were picked up by the guard and brought out to an area that was not under water and choppered out, then went to stay in Mpls with relatives for 3-4 weeks. Was really mad at my parents because they made me go to school when we were down there lol. Different era as I had really no idea where my friends were for that few weeks. When we came back the school had a get together and everyone had been all over the place. We were lucky that only our basement flooded. My parents did have flood insurance but I dont' think they ended up much ahead since FEMA kind of bailed everyone out (again I was a kid so don't know the details there). Remember during the clean-up everyone had 5-8 foot piles of debris on their yards as you drove around town. It took a long time to get everything cleaned up. I remember the Red Cross and Salvation Army trucks coming around all summer like an ice cream truck would and serving meals right on the street. Got lots of Yoo-hoo drinks donated and lots of water from Anheuser-Busch in cans. School got torn down and had to go to school in a steel building with untaped sheet rock for 2 years.
It's probably a foolish thing to say, but in the long run it was probably good for the town. The feds were pretty flush with cash at that time and we got a lot of new schools and infrastructure. Cabela's probably wouldn't have come without the money they had available. Most of downtown was pretty much dead prior to the flood and it allowed a lot of new growth. It is amazing when I go back to reminisce about how much the town has changed since before the flood - entire neighborhoods gone where several of my friends grew up. Obviously there was a lot of heartache along the way.

 

[deleted member]

Have to agree the town is wayyyy better off today than it was in 1996.

 

[Allen]

Allen, where did you bury the body or just throw in river.

Oddly enough, I helped him graduate. Hoping that he would leave GF as I was just starting to work fulltime for UND. Last I heard he was making bank out in the oilpatch and still living in a dump of an apartment in GF (that's been a while ago though).

Oh the frigging stories I have of that guy. We grad students were a fairly tight knit group and we went out to celebrate a birthday one evening at Joe DiMaggio's. As one table opened up, several of us were quick to have a seat knowing that the rest of our group would have to wait for another table. Capt Weirdo helped that along. As soon as we sat down he sparked up a conversation with a neighboring table. Within 45 seconds he just bluntly asked "hey, are you done with that" as he pointed at the guys half eaten burger and remaining fries. Yep, he helped himself to a stranger's plate of food. I about died laughing as he carefully ate around the other guy's bite marks.

- - - Updated - - -

Have to agree the town is wayyyy better off today than it was in 1996.

I left GF in 2003 but still go back for hockey games and would have to agree. Man do I miss the old Whitey's, Backdoor Warehouse Bar, Antique, etc. That was a great place pre-flood. Rest of the GF-EGF area, not so much. But there were a lot of good times bouncing around those places.

 

[KDM]

Activated for the Fargo Flood Fight and spent 90 days walking dikes, guarding pumps, drove our humvee to pick up anybody that needed medical attention or had appointments, directed traffic, sand bagged, yadda, yadda, yadda. Closest thing to combat without the bullets I was ever involved in. We had quick reaction forces (NDSU Wrestling, Football, and Volleyball teams), supply lines, medical support, command and control, food services, and anything else you can think of....EXCEPT the bombs, bullets, and other ordnance. Not a fun time by any means, but we did it.

 

[Bullsnake]

my dad was the track for us back then, he would always take his team to fat alberts for subs, which was awesome, I don't think they ever reopened after that