Flood Fighting and Life Lessons

Little did we know when we bought our dream house about a half mile from the Missouri River in Bismarck, N.D., that we would fight floods. Our house is located in a small subdivision on the outskirts of town. It was built in the mid-1970s before flood plain zoning made duplicating of what we have impossible. One of the selling points was Bismarck had not experienced a flood since Garrison Dam, about 75 miles north, was finished in 1953.

That all changed with a vengeance in March 2009 when an ice jam on the river south of us backed it up into our house. We had about 20 minutes to evacuate and came back to six feet of water in the basement. Without NFIP and the sound advice of our Trusted Choice® agency, Hub International Insurance of Bismarck, the financial hit would have crippled us. A government loan covered what flood insurance did not. With the help of an outstanding remediation contractor, family and a local softball team, we recovered and figured this would be our last flood experience in paradise.

We were wrong. Abnormal rain and a wet winter and spring have filled the Missouri River series of dams to unprecedented levels. The record snowpack in the Rockies has not yet started to melt. In order to make room, the emergency spillways of Garrison Dam were opened to discharge water at astronomical rates guaranteed to create downstream flooding, including where we live. In the years since completion, the spillway gates have never been opened. Now they are.

The river will crest significantly over flood stage and stay that way for at least six weeks. Since the topography is relatively flat, areas near the river will be hit hard. It is a slow-moving disaster bearing down on Bismarck, no different than what is happening along the Mississippi. We have had about two or three weeks to prepare. And now my thoughts turn to lessons learned, sometimes painfully.

The first lesson I learned is many do not carry flood insurance. North Dakota Big “I” members have done everything they can to educate their clients about NFIP, and it seems to fall on deaf ears. We continue to hammer on this every spring across the state, yet the take-up rates are low. The excuses for not purchasing flood coverage do not make sense to me. We often hear “It doesn’t cover anything,” “It can’t get to my house,” and “The river/lake/stream has never overflowed.” Gambling with most families’ biggest asset is a bad bet, as many now realize.

Once we realized a flood was coming, we decided to build a sandbag dike around our house and I learned about dike engineering. At its most fundamental level, filling sand bags and building a dike is brutal grunt labor. I realized, though, we were blessed with willing family and friends who worked tirelessly, often late into the night.

The next lesson is elected officials listen. Our neighborhood is now behind two solid dikes. There was some public resistance initially but my neighbors and I launched a campaign via email, phone and public hearings to convince elected officials we deserved to be protected. We turned their attitude around in a short time. Elected officials paid attention and the old adage about the squeaky wheel and grease was validated. Never hesitate to weigh in with reluctant elected officials.

We learned several practical steps, too:

• Find or rent a trailer towable by a pickup. It makes all the heavy lifting tasks easier.
• Move your irreplaceable mementos early.
• Plug the drains in the lowest level of your house. Forget the ones upstairs.
• Make sure your sump pump(s) run—replace if necessary.
• Get on the utility company’s call list in case they decide to cut the power.
• Hook up hoses to drain your downspouts outside any dike you build.
• Buy the sand and sand bags and fill them on site.

We also learned some life lessons. Maybe they are the most important. We are blessed with an astonishing array of family and friends without whom preparation would have been impossible. The next is remembering that stuff is only stuff—bricks and boards—not lives. Finally, and the hardest for me, was to identify what you can control, protect it the best you can and let the rest go. Water goes downhill. Worry will not change that reality. I

Evan Mandango (iiand@bis.midco.net) is the state executive of the Independent Insurance Agents of North Dakota.