Introduction
By the end of Sunday, March 22, the flood level on the Red River had reached nearly 22 feet. Within hours it would rise another 4 to 5 feet, and each day thereafter the flood waters would rise at a similar rate, rising twice as fast as in previous days. In the entire Fargo-Moorhead community, schools and businesses were assessing the situation, releasing employees to help in flood fighting efforts, and mustering resources to contribute to the effort. State and federal officials were mobilizing to provide resources and support on the ground as quickly as possible.
The Emergency Operations Center in Fargo had been established by city, county, and other officials to set up an efficient and centralized hub for coordinating flood and disaster response efforts. It was operating at full tilt by Monday morning and would continue to coordinate efforts across the city and county in coming days. The local response to the need for volunteers and a massive work effort was tremendous—residents, businesses, schools, and churches across Fargo-Moorhead mobilized quickly and turned out to volunteer.
While state and federal officials and outside agencies were contacted for support, one thing was clear—the community took this burden upon its own shoulders. Dennis Walaker, our mayor in Fargo, is a bear of a man with a kind heart and a mild manner, and he had been the city’s Public Works director in the 1997 flooding and events that followed. His experience and wisdom in directing the effort, in addition to the trusted and efficient team of city and county officials that included Dr. Tim Mahoney, a physician and deputy mayor, were invaluable. They understood the need for sharing information and their 8:00 a.m. coordinating meetings broadcast on local TV and radio became instant and valued sources of information.
The Fargo LDS wards and branch were in a somewhat similar position to the local cities. We welcomed outside support and encouragement, but it was clear from the outset that this was our fight and we would need to rely largely on each other and our own preparedness. I thought Monday morning of the Savior’s parable of ten virgins in Matthew 25, who are called upon to prepare and meet the bridegroom. Five of the ten women “took oil in their vessels with their lamps” and were prepared with resources when the time came.
However, five of the ten did not so prepare and were “foolish” and “took no oil with them”—and when the time came no one could provide for them what they lacked. It seemed similar to me. The event had come upon us and it was now time to do all that we could in meeting the challenge, and we must use the resources that we had prepared, both physical and emotional and spiritual resources. The Fargo Latter-day Saints by Monday morning were moving forward to the front lines of service.
Day 5 – Monday, March 23, 2009
Red River Flood Stage – 26.03 feet
The meetings and counsel we had shared together as ward members and leaders on Sunday morning had prepared us for efforts in the next 48 hours. On Monday morning, I arose early and arrived at work in my “work clothes” to assess needs there and the planned response. Classes at North Dakota State University had been canceled and university officials were encouraging us to participate in the volunteer effort.
I had come to work with work boots on and a shovel in the back of my vehicle. My own employer, the NDSU Extension Service, is a statewide educational organization and had much experience providing informational resources on flood response, as well as other topics for community well-being (click here). I turned that morning to some of this information to gain a better sense of what I might need to know about basic needs of ward members and community members in the days ahead.
My wife had purchased me a cell phone for Christmas, which I almost never used, but suddenly I found myself thanking her for her foresight as it became a communication link I critically needed in the hours and days ahead. By mid-morning I had researched information I had felt would be helpful to my understanding.
My oldest daughter, at age 16, dressed for volunteer efforts and was sandbagging out in the community with fellow high school students by 9:30 a.m. in the morning. Most of our seminary-age students had turned out that morning at 6:20 a.m. for seminary at the chapel, went to school, and then spread across the community in volunteer efforts. Later that day she would relate to me the exhaustion of their efforts but also the thrill of working much of the day alongside our local full-time LDS missionaries. One of them, Elder Morrell, had told me that he had long wanted to volunteer in flood response or other community efforts as he had seen LDS missionaries do in church news items on such efforts worldwide. “This is your chance!” I told him on Sunday.
Shortly before leaving for my own efforts, I sent out a post on Facebook (a social networking site) to friends and family at 11:28 a.m. – “We are sandbagging, sandbagging, sandbagging. Pray for us!” In the days that followed, these brief once-a-day updates gave some indication of our efforts and my mindset. I also exchanged email with a cousin and told her: “All depends on the weather here – not looking good. If the river crests at 41 feet, the prediction and a historic high, we all may have to evacuate and Fargo may be under water. We’re working hard to prevent it.”
Our Fargo 2 nd Ward members needed no manual or specific set of instructions – we had encouraged them to respond as community members and they did so with vigor. The community had asked us to help in making up to 2.5 million sandbags as quickly as possible. It seemed an impossible task. However, I traveled to the nearby FargoDome next to the NDSU campus which had been set up as a sandbagging site. One other location was already in operation, and I arrived shortly after city officials set up the FargoDome as a second site.
The FargoDome is a massive indoor arena that is used for college football games, large concerts, auto shows and agricultural expos, and other regional community events. The operation was set up in the south parking lot and involved dump trucks dumping large piles of sand around which volunteers gathered to set up chains of volunteers who held bags, shoveled and filled them with sand, tied them and moved them to pallets for loading on trucks and community distribution. It was cold and windy, but volunteers either waited for buses to take them to community sites in need or streamed to the parking lot to fill sandbags. I picked a pile and shoveled sand, filling sandbags from noon till 7:00 p.m.
As I worked, the volunteers around me became acquaintances and then friends. I asked them questions and was humbled by their responses. Where did they come from? Two men I was working with were farmers who had driven hundreds of miles up the highway from South Dakota to help. Another had driven nearly fifty miles that morning from Detroit Lakes, Minnesota.
Later my daughter told me that she had worked that day with volunteers coming from Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Why did they come? To help. This tremendous spirit of service was impressed upon me by the example and effort of others over and over again in the days to follow, by people of diverse backgrounds and faith communities.
Taking a short break at 5:30 p.m. to eat a sandwich provided by a Salvation Army truck, I sat on a curb with my shovel and Sister Martha Olsen walked toward me. A long-time member of our Fargo 2 nd Ward, Sister Olsen is a wonderful and faithful church member with a buoyant spirit and a great heart. We visited briefly and I watched her continue on, and noticed that apparently she almost never left her volunteer station in the 5 days that followed because I saw here there at all hours of the day and night whenever I was there.
She manned registration tables, served food, filled sandbags, and encouraged spirits wherever she went. The amazing thing to me as I watched this great uprising of human compassion and energy unfold was that so many of our ward members performed similarly.
That night at 7:57 p.m., I wrote after dinner another note: “7 hours of sandbagging so far today—back out for more tonight. We need prayers and divine intervention, and lots of volunteers and work, work, work.” My oldest daughter and oldest son, 16 and 14, jumped in the car with me and traveled back to the sandbagging site. We arrived shortly after 8:00 p.m. and walked into the FargoDome. The massive operation had now moved indoors to the floor of the great arena, and as we walked inside an unbelievable site met our eyes. Dump trucks, bulldozers, and forklifts moved about the floor with efficiency and speed, dumping sand into huge piles as hundreds of student and community volunteers formed work crews to prepare sandbags, tie them off, and carry them or pass them down human chains to pallets or loading bins. It was a beehive of activity. We moved to the floor and picked a pile.
As we worked together, I watched my children and other young people with a growing sense of awe. A crisis event sometimes triggers the potential within a young person and you can watch it unfold before your eyes. My daughter had already spent over 9 hours moving sandbags and laying them on dikes throughout the community, and yet she came willingly with me and worked beside me making more sandbags. When did this massive operation stop? Never. It operated 24 hours a day for each day that followed in the days to come. Volunteers were needed throughout the day and night. My son shoveled and hauled sandbags without complaint, as did hundreds of others.
Next to us a young woman with a red-and-white head covering around her neck filled sandbags. I leaned over and asked why she had this covering, a Jordanian kheffiyeh (Middle Eastern head covering), as I had seen them often when I lived at BYU’s Jerusalem Center in the Holy Land for six months. She told me that she was from Lebanon. Two young men with her were from Iraq, refugees from the war there who had come to live in Fargo. We visited and I quickly used up my meager supply of Arabic learned while in the Middle East as a student, but we worked together long hours and I marveled at the situation, Mormon and Muslim working together to fill sandbags and save a Midwestern community. We reached home after midnight.
Day 6 – Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Red River Flood Stage – 30.77 feet
At 8:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning, March 24, I watched the TV news coverage of the morning meeting held by city officials on the flood response. The night before I had gone through a similar coordinating process in talking with ward leaders and church members at risk in flood-prone areas. Although the flood waters were not yet overwhelming us, we now needed to build the dikes throughout the city high enough to withstand a projected flood level of 39 to 41 feet. It also seemed clear that the eyes of the country, indeed the world, were turning in our direction.
The city official responsible for the sandbagging operation was asked for a report. There was a brief pause. He was direct and open, admitting honestly that he had been skeptical that we could do what was being asked in producing more than 250,000 sandbags each day. The goal of 200,000 sandbags in 24 hours had seemed a monumental stretch. Then he stated: “Yesterday in the first 12 hours of operation we produced 280,000 sandbags. In the next 12 hours of operation that continued during the night we produced 170,000 sandbags—450,000 sandbags.” It is hard to explain, but this comment made a deep spiritual impact on me.
The Spirit touched me and it symbolized to me instantly what a community of God’s children, working together in a united effort of love and labor, could accomplish in a remarkable way. These sandbags were not only being produced, but quickly moved throughout the community and used to build a growing system of dikes to protect vulnerable areas of the city.
My younger sister had responded to one of my earlier notes on Facebook in the wee hours of the morning, responding with this message: “I have been watching the news all day, had to get on and check the Fargo news before I went to bed. Wish I could help in some way! (Our daughter) prayed for you guys tonight, without any help. Love you!!” My lovely niece is only three years old, and yet knowledge of her heartfelt prayer so many miles away gave me strength to start a new day with a tired and aching body, for the prayers of children are filled with great faith. My two oldest children, who had volunteered until late, left again for school and would spend the entire day again in volunteer sandbagging efforts.
While I had worked and labored the day before, an inspired team of home and visiting teachers and quorum leaders had planned and organized another sandbagging venture at a member’s home that was in likely danger. Our high priests group leader, Brother Bryan King, interfaced with the family and home teacher and received direction from Brother Cook, our other bishop’s counselor. Brother Cook was engaged in long hours each of these days with providing critical medical treatment to many workers on the front lines, and appropriately felt that this was where he was needed in the community.
They set the work time for 10:00 a.m. I called our ward mission leader, Brother Matt Ironroad, and traveled with him to the family’s home located far south along the river. Brother Ironroad is a meek and spiritual giant of a man, of Lakota Sioux ancestry and currently a university student. I would ask him to go with me often during this busy week as I relied on his strength, gentle humor, willing service, and wise counsel in meeting the needs of ward members.
Once again, as on the occasions over the weekend, a combined crew of Latter-day Saints and community members formed a united team to build a sandbag dike around the home of this family.
A team of our 12 and 13-year old deacons who had been released from school were there, and they worked to hold and fill most of the sandbags that we were creating for placement on the sandbag dike around the home. J.T. Smith, Erik Adams, Bryan King, and others worked as much as any grown man or woman there, as did one of our Young Women Madison Berney, though probably throwing a little more snow and making a bit more mischief.
In all, I lost count of our more than 35 ward members who showed up to assist. Not only priesthood men, but many Relief Society sisters came to assist and pass heavy sandbags along the lines stretching around the house. Amber Hoffman, Kara Price, Julie Berney, Angela Smith and other women came, some with their spouses. Scott and Ami Porter, the home teachers, came with their children and our ranks were swelled by the addition of a dozen men from DMI, a local manufacturing plant, who had been asked to come by their supervisor, Phil Christiansen, a member of our ward. Friends of the Anderberg family and family members themselves threw sandbags and directed the development of the dike around the home. Full-time missionaries carried bags up the steepest slopes around the home, Elders Worthen and Morrell and others, along with senior sisters, Sister Marlow and Sister Cooper. One of our counselors in the stake presidency, President Ray Babcock, moved sandbags and helped to coordinate building of the dike, encouraging us with his ready smile and humor.
Within 5 hours we had build a solid sandbag dike with thousands of sandbags around the perimeter of the home at any elevation that might be threatened by rising flood waters. We were hopeful that it would withstand any pressure from the river. Our Relief Society sisters had arranged for food and brought it out to the home while we worked, Sister Brooke Cook coming with young children to fulfill that task that cheered everyone.
I was pleased with the efforts of a large group of nearly 50 volunteers, both Latter-day Saints and family and friends and community members, to accomplish this great task. But more precious to me than the dike was the friendship, the unity, the spirit, the compassion—the spirit of the Savior in the work we did together. Perhaps even more impressive was the spirit of the family, who worked diligently and then prepared for a precious coming event—the temple marriage of the oldest daughter on Saturday—it was planned whether or not the flood waters rose.
In returning home with Brother Ironroad we attempted to check on the Budge family, whose home we had sandbagged on Sunday (see Part 2), but by then the road had been closed due to dike-building activity in the area and we could not proceed. It was a clear signal that the risks were rising quickly in our community. I reached home and coordinated with my wife and then ward leaders on coming efforts. My wife took the major responsibility to prepare our home, ensure our 72-hour kits were ready, and pack bags to be ready in case of evacuation. I knew that I did not need to worry greatly about the efforts of ward members—I had seen dozens of them in action that morning and afternoon. After dinner I returned with my children, now including my 12-year old son, and went to make sandbags again at the FargoDome. There we met up with President Ryan West, our elders quorum president, who was there working.
We followed the efforts of the night before, joining a massive group of volunteers who were working on large sand piles throughout the floor of the arena. National Guard troops, city employees, and others coordinated the flow of sandbags and materials while we provided labor. My son spent long hours filling sandbags in cooperation and conversation with a young woman from India. Ryan West and I teamed up with other ward members we found volunteering there on the floor, including a single sister who I home teach, Juli Brewster and her son Jordan (a new deacon), as well as Rick Adams, Ben Hoffman, and many others.
I know that you do not know these names, but in a sense you know these people—they are your fellow Latter-day Saints. The elders quorum counselor, the home teacher, the sister you visit teach, the Primary teacher, the deacon passing the sacrament—all of them are people you know and appreciate. I want you to see, in a sense, what this great endeavor allowed me to see, their compassion and strength and spirit of service. Their genuine discipleship in following the Savior’s example of love and sacrifice and service to others.
My late-night summaries to my family and friends via my Facebook page were brief but highlight the events of the day. First, I wrote, “Wow. 5 hours sandbagging along the river, then 4 and a half hours past midnight with my boys. My daughter did over 9 hours all day till 9:30 at night.” Then I added, “The flood fight is on, but the folks here are amazing. Long hours sandbagging tonight with Ryan West, Juli Brewster, Ben Hoffman, Rick Adams, and many others.”
Day 7 – Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Red River Flood Stage – 35.46 feet
How fast was the river rising to threaten our community? Another 5 feet in 24 hours—very fast. The morning news at the city’s official flood response coordination meeting was encouraging, in one sense. We had created another half million sandbags (500,000 bags of sand) in the previous 24 hours, a feat they had been unsure could be repeated. However, there was also much dire news.
First, the flood projection from the morning meeting now definitely projected to 41 feet, on the “high side” of the earlier projections—and higher than anyone alive had ever witnessed or experienced. We had no prior experience in fighting a flood of such magnitude. Second, the day’s forecast was bone-chilling – a winter snow storm of between 6 and 10 inches of snow with temperatures below 20 degrees Fahrenheit, and wind whipping through the region. How could we fight a flood and a winter storm both at the same time?
Finally, the first news of the morning that I received on our church members was discouraging. The home we had labored hours to protect and defend had been inundated with flood waters through the foundation of the home in the early hours of the morning. Thankfully, all family members had either left the home the night before or managed to get out in safety, though they had only minutes to escape and were unable to carry out almost any belongings.
Snow, higher flood waters, and a member’s home inundated by the flood—it was a discouraging way to start the morning. My preparation for the day consisted of donning my work clothes, counseling with my wife, and spending half an hour in solitude upon my knees. There is a line from the hymn, “Put Your Shoulder to the Wheel,” which urges us to “work and watch and fight and pray, with all your might and zeal”—that is how I felt.
At the beginning of the day, I knew that I could not “do that day” as I then felt. Following my prayer, it was as if the sun dawned and I felt that I could go forward and “do that day.”
Our window of response time was closing quickly. The flood projections were moving higher, and with the projection at 41 feet, massive efforts were being made not only to build the 48 miles of dikes we needed but to add an extra foot or two to those dikes and levees already built in previous days. This was mentally exhausting and physically draining to the entire community. However, I felt a spirit as I talked to people and realized that people were praying fervently just as hard as they were working. Ours is a community of faith, in which most people worship frequently in a faith community of their choice. I welcomed their prayers.
The previous evening I had counseled with ward leaders and we made a united decision to make Wednesday a “Special Day of Prayer.” Many members who were working out in the community could not fast due to the great physical and mental energy needed in our efforts, but they could pray, and those at home could both fast and pray. The bishop of the Fargo 1 st Ward, Bishop Bryan Brown, quickly agreed and we were supported by our stake leaders in this request. President Scott Barrett, our Fargo 3 rd Branch (YSA) branch president, had already begun communicating this request to his branch members the previous day while out sandbagging. While I believe that our outpouring of community effort had a vital role in helping us meet the threat of the rising flood waters, I am even more convinced that this day of prayer and the united prayers of many others did more than anything to assist us. It gave us strength to go forward, united us in faith, and helped our Heavenly Father to know of our pleas for assistance.
Ironically, one of my sisters checked in with an email on this day that stated she heard things were “not as bad as expected.” Actually, they were getting much worse than expected! The freezing temperatures and snow were slowing down the response, making distribution of materials much more difficult, and freezing the sandbags so it was more difficult to build dikes. Little did we fully realize that what seemed to be a hindrance was perhaps the Lord’s mighty hand to assist us in answer to our prayers.
I picked up Brother Ironroad and his wife, and we traveled to a specific region of the city where a call had gone out for assistance in building sandbag dikes. President Barrett had also called for church members to assist in that area as he had family members with a home nearby, and soon we emerged on the banks of a large coulee that passes through town with homes and businesses on both sides. The task before us was to build a three-foot dike that was twice as wide at the base and that would stretch more than a mile along the banks.
The temperatures were freezing and snow fell steadily. However, the city was well organized and we joined a line of hundreds of volunteers. Pallets of sandbags were driven through mud and snow to the banks of the coulee, and the volunteers organized to yank them from the pallet, pass them down a human chain, and place them quickly in the growing pyramid dike. At times it took no more than two to three minutes to empty a pallet of its many sandbags.
In addition, as I worked among the various groups that labored on building this emergency dike, another impression began to grow on me. Out of the snow began to appear the forms and wind-blown faces of people that I knew—our LDS church members responding to the call. Scott Barrett, Brett Seamons, Rick and Erik Adams, Mike and Maren Sharland, Ryan Backer, and many others. It seemed that wherever I went and whatever task I approached they were there ahead of me, these Saints in word and deed, in cooperation with their neighbors and friends and fellow citizens.
We worked for some hours, and then I traveled with the Ironroads to the home of our Relief Society president, Sister Shay Seamons. Sister Seamons was coordinating contact with members across the ward, checking on and communicating their status, and we met briefly to send a united message via email to our ward leaders and members from the bishopric and Relief Society presidency. We reiterated instructions from our stake presidency that had come forward and provided a series of specific bullet points that we felt members should remember and follow in the immediate days ahead.
