Minot, ND

I am sitting in my make-shift office, a Sunday-school room at the church with limited internet connection and tiny-human chairs, trying to think of a clever title for this post, and I just can't. It's been hard enough this week to force myself to gather all of the info together to try and do justice to the flood, the people here, and our whole experience. But I'll give it a shot.

Minot is a city in northwest North Dakota. It's decent-sized with a population of around 65,000, a college, and an air force base. It's called “The Magic City” having sprung up overnight as the Great Northern Railway company moved through the area in 1886. Today, this whole region is a hotbed of oil activity. According to some locals I've talked to, there is more oil under the northwestern corner of ND than there is under Saudi Arabia, with rigs pumping out 3000 barrels a day. Apparently, they've known for a while that the oil is here, but just recently found the technology to get it out because it's found mostly in shale, a type of sedimentary rock. This is all over my head, but the point is that there was a lot going on here right before the flood, and the cost of housing was through the roof. Then came the disaster.

You have a body of water running through the area called the Mouse River. When it gets into Canada it's called the Souris River. Back in June, because of heavy rain fall and a ton of snow the year before, the river was about to crest. So Canada released some dams on their side, causing a surge of water to come barreling toward Minot. Since the city hadn't seen this type of disaster since 1969, homes that were in no way prepared for it were hit hard. Unfortunately, some home-owners had tried to get flood insurance before the incident, but were denied because they weren't in a flood zone. To top that off, these same people had dikes built up around their neighborhood to protect the university from flooding—so blocks of homes within the dikes were turned into a man-made lake. Then the school went the extra step of pumping their sewage into the lake. Hearing that last part from a home owner was a shocker for me.

Right now, the town is in a transition period. There are the people who have moved out of town completely. This has left a ton of jobs open all over the city. You can get a gig at Pizza Hut making something crazy like $15 an hour. There are signs up all over the place advertising competitive wages. But the flip side is the high cost of living with homes already being expensive because of the oil drilling. Then there are those who are staying around to stick it out. They live across town with family, in a hotel, Red Cross shelter, or FEMA trailer at a lot or parked on what used to be their front yard.

These people are trying to figure out how to go on. If they're living with their family/friends, they are probably starting to overstay their welcome as the months go on, and they need a place to live. New FEMA trailers are popping up every day. But there is still the issue of figuring out what to do with the destroyed homes. Some people hire out to contractors, and many are getting ripped off my scammers who take the money, but don't actually do the mucking, gutting or sanitizing of the homes that they promise. Then there are groups like Lutheran Disaster Response (the organization I'm working with) that helps these people at no cost. LDR is getting new clients every day from families who never thought people would be willing to help them out for free, and they're extremely grateful. But it's a race to winter in order to get these homes cleaned out. They need to be mucked, power washed, and then sit for a few weeks to air out and kill the mold. Then they have to be “buttoned up” (sealed) for winter, before the temperature drops.

Then you have others who are still living in their hazardous homes, refusing to leave. I didn't know this group existed until a couple of days ago. My team was sent to power wash a home. So we showed up, unpacked all of our equipment and started to head in, thinking it was an empty home that had already been mucked (all the flooded junk cleared out). We found out instead that there was a woman in her 70's still living there, and too poor/stuck in her ways to move out. She'd basically been living there for over 40 years. Though she was right next to the river and her basement was flooded, the upstairs hadn't been too affected, so she was living there like normal. When I walked in she was siting in a recliner with a blanket over her. The whole house smelled horrible, like cat pee and mold. She was incredibly happy to see our team, and super-emotional, talking about how her kids wouldn't help her and people had told her to move out but she didn't want to. Her husband had died years before and she still missed him and said it was hard to be alone. I felt for her and really wanted to help, but then the team realized that the basement was still full of items that would need to be removed before the power washing could take place. Plus the main route to remove the items was through a garage that had a collapsed roof. Then we found asbestos, and realized that we wouldn't be able to work on the house at all. The team was pretty jarred. After all that, we had to pack up, and it was decided that the woman's church would need to have a pastor come and talk to her about moving out. It looked like she might have to go to an old-folks home and the house was in bad shape, to the point needing to be condemned.

So far, Minot has been a very interesting experience. It's weird being on the ground soon after this type of a disaster and seeing all the different ways that the community is altered, and how your work makes an impact. At many of the houses we've worked on over the last 2 weeks, we've been able to meet the home owners, and that's been a really fulfilling experience for the team. It's a good motivator to see who we're helping. And the crazy thing is that THEY want to give US money and food. Of course, we can't accept the money, but it's amazing that these people who lost most of what they own now want to give us what little they have to say thank you. And another odd thing is that according to our site supervisor Dave, there are groups of miscellaneous volunteers who just travel the country going from disaster to disaster, helping people clean up and rebuild. He's one of them in fact. And he says that he's seen the same faces from hurricane victims in New Orleans to tornado victims in Alabama. I feel like I should call my old employers at the New Line Cinema development department and pitch this as a reality show idea. It's just so interesting to me.

One thing that has been difficult though, is the looming possibility of another flood next year. As we clean up these houses, we can't help but take into consideration that talk of a repeat disaster. What if this happens again in 2012? What steps will the city take to protect it's citizens, and what will the home-owners do?