Episcopal Church in Upper Midwest Responds to Floods and Blizzards
Episcopal News Service. April 18, 1997 [97-1742]
Communications Assistant for the office of news and information
(ENS) Flooding followed by blizzard followed by more flooding has led to the declaration of federal disaster areas in many counties in North Dakota and Minnesota. Most severely hit is the area around Whapeton, North Dakota, and its sister city, Breckenridge, Minnesota. Through a grant from the Presiding Bishop's Fund, the Episcopal Diocese of North Dakota is bolstering relief efforts during the worst flooding in history.
"It defies description," said Rev. Charles Cherry, pastor of St. John the Divine in Moorhead, Minnesota, who is staying with relatives after being evacuated from his home. "I came home to find the water rising and then it started raining and then it turned into a blizzard and by midnight we had sub-zero temperatures. It was surreal." In the storm's aftermath, approximately 45,000 people were without electricity and two Fargo television stations were forced off the air. The area's only blizzard and flood-related fatality occurred when a woman and her young daughter died of exposure after their car slid into a river that had washed away a levee.
But warmer weather does not necessarily bring relief to an area that has had continuous snow cover since October. "With all the snow gradually melting," said Bishop Andrew Fairfield of North Dakota, "the problem is not so much the river flooding, but standing water coming overland. The land is so flat out here. When you fly over it, all you can see are rectangular fields of water and ice." While there are no official estimates about the cost of flood damage, Fairfield said that half of the houses were under water in the river valley around Whapeton and that area shelters were full.
Calling the $25,000 emergency grant from the Presiding Bishop's Fund for World Relief "a godsend," Fairfield said that he sent $5,000 of the grant to the American Red Cross, which, along with the Salvation Army, has seen to immediate needs for food, shelter and clothing. He said the remainder of the grant would be used to assist people whose insurance and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) grants do not cover the damage done to their homes.
Earlier this winter, when unabated cold caused fuel bills to skyrocket in the middle of the state, the diocese received a $20,000 grant from the fund to fortify a food bank that serves the Standing Rock Reservation west of Fargo. Fairfield said he also received $2,000 from Bishop John Smith of West Virginia, North Dakota's sister diocese, which he used to respond to an emergency call for flood relief from the Salvation Army.
"Some of us in Fargo are living fairly normal lives," Fairfield noted, as a radio in his office reported that a school one half mile from the diocesan house was about to be evacuated. Outside his office window, he said he could see flatbed trucks hauling bulldozers and earth-laden dump trucks rumbling towards the dikes.
Other lives, however, were far from normal. Cherry was keeping in touch with his congregation by phone and considering the loan of a truck from a parishioner so that he could make house visits. The director of the local zoo, who took a boat out to Cherry's house to rescue animals that Cherry had adopted when the zoo flooded, called to reassure him that the flood waters had not yet reached the first floor of his house.
"Right now, the prospects are good," he said. "The radio says the river has gone down one half inch in the last few hours. But the mayor reminded us not to be complacent."