Run for your lives, Minot, N.D.

Yeah, it was under-reported nationally. There haven't been a whole lot of one-year anniversary stories, either. It's sad because there aren't a lot of resources and the local volunteers are pretty much exhausted. There aren't a lot of businesses and corporations to ask for donations to assist in rebuilding, either.

And dools, I get the joke, but being on the ground here and having toured the areas of devastation, I'm not able to laugh at it. It's fantastic no one died in the floods, but a quarter of the homes and businesses were wiped out. Maybe it's nice someone can find humor in it, but hearing their stories firsthand, I just can't laugh.

 

How much are oil companies chipping in?

 

I'm trying to track that down. There are a couple of different agencies trying to find funds for different things, and I haven't met with the key person on that yet. I'm told some of the oil companies stepped up initially. Now, though, the rebuilding is starting. I've only been here a week but apparently a complete rebuild is around $200k.

My group is focusing on getting people back into their homes, not entire renovation. Just out of the temporary housing and back into their homes. That's $20k a house, of which the homeowner can usually only afford $8k or so. (We're focusing on the harder hit people who have no one who can help.) So there's a big deficit we're trying to complement with grants, discounted materials and such. (This is new to me -- any suggestions on how to find grants?)

I talked to a lot of people on Saturday who had lost their homes. Some were good stories, some upset me. A few are really bitter but most are just dealing with it. Apparently the city is waffling on some decisions but residents have to make calls in the meantime. One lady said she'd worked all year to rebuild and just got back into her home, but as soon as she got in the city decided she would have to vacate. I can't even imagine. Others just walked away and left town.

The park that just reopened was with money from Coke -- the flood relief committees got people to vote on some website and won a contest for the funds to rebuild the thing. Now they are trying to do the same with the other park, which has a zoo attached. The animals, I'm told, are still living at other zoos. I was out there yesterday -- it's a mess still.

I'm living on a compound that houses about 160 short-term volunteers. I'm in an RV with no running water -- that's about a city block away, across the campus. It's far more rustic than my Peace Corps housing.

We feed and house these groups that come in to help. Otherwise, there's no place for them to stay. There's just no housing in this place, and taking out 25 percent of the homes in a housing-scarce boomtown that had already been keeping builders busy before the flood didn't help matters.

It's really a unique situation from a disaster standpoint. Not to infer that all disasters are alike, but North Dakota seems to have a lot of factors working against its rebuild.