An up close and personal look at flooding in the Red River Valley

In 1997, the sandbagging was not enough to save Grand Forks. The river rose higher than it had been since 1826. Downtown Grand Forks was destroyed by explosions and fire that added on to the damage caused by the water. ... The local TV stations carried stories of cattle stranded in flowing water, unable to reach higher ground. Some cattle were frozen standing in place as the floodwaters froze at night.

From A Simple Assignment . Go read it!

More like this

This is the time of year the Red River floods (or not). This is an item that appeared on Quiche Moraine last year during flood season: A Simple Assignment Red River Flood Mike Haubrich This was a simple assignment, really. Drive to Lakeville, examine a car for flood damage and send an estimate to…
In 1999, during my intern year, Hurricane Mitch struck Central America. As stated below, I wanted to become involved. The program director of my residency was kind enough to view this as a worthwhile educational experience. This is part II of my diary from the trip. Part I is here. To Juticalpa As…
Via AlertNet, I just saw this missive from the Belgian relief group CARE, which is already on the ground in Bangladesh but realizes the magnitude of the problem is even bigger than expected. This is the best sense I've been able to get yet of conditions where the storm struck, so I'm reproducing in…
Joe and Mary built a house. They built it on an old flood plain of a small river, though there'd not been a flood in years. This was a 500-year flood plain. Not a very floody flood plain at all. The local zoning code required that for a new house at their location the bottom of the basement…