North Dakota Flooding

From the sunny quiet of our mother’s home in Long Beach, it is hard to believe that only a week ago we were frantically building a sandbag dike in front of our home in Grand Forks, N.D., knowing that the flood waters would reach our front porch in a matter of hours. Last Friday evening we abandoned the task as the local radio commentator announced, “Grand Forks officials have ceased all flood preparation activities . . . we are simply going to let the river find its natural level.”

No one had slept properly in days. Thousands of volunteers had spent weeks filling sandbags, building berms, emptying basements of irreplaceable treasures, making countless sandwiches and bagging cookies for flood fighters. We all knew that life would be different after the flood, but we never imagined that the flood would be so devastating in the small details of life and in the big ones--ruined baby albums and wedding pictures, no commencement or prom for thousands of high school and university students, decades of research notes lost in our basement offices at the University of North Dakota where we are professors, some homes lifted cleanly off their foundations, basements filled with toxic sewage, the historic downtown gutted by fire.

We do not know what we will be returning to in a few weeks. No one has seen our house yet to assess the damage. From the distance we have only the views and words of CNN and The Times. The Times articles by Jesse Katz, Stephen Braun, Elizabeth Shogren and others have kept us sadly, but crucially, connected to our community. Thank you.

MELINDA LEACH

BURT THORP

Long Beach