Armey gets look at flood devastation
Grand Forks, N.D. (AP)
Native son and House Majority Leader Dick Armey brought a congressional delegation to this deluged city Monday, saying, "It just tears you up" when he saw a submerged neighborhood he once dreamed of living in.

Standing in a section of town where water lapped at window panes just blocks from the engorged Red River, Armey recalled living in Grand Forks as a 1950s graduate student at the University of North Dakota.

"I’m standing here thinking about the days when my wife and I scrapped together 50 cents (for gasoline) so we could drive through Belmont Park and look at our dream house," said the Texas Republican, who was born in Cando, about 20 miles from the Canadian border.

Though he never lived in the once well-to-do enclave, he was taken by the memory.

"That could have been our house," he said, pointing to a home up to its shutters in mucky floodwater.

Following President Clinton and House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Armey, joined by eight other congressional members, came to pay his respects and to promise federal help to this devastated city of 50,000 now beginning a long road to recovery.

The raging Red drowned most of Grand Forks. More than a week after nearly everyone was evacuated, pockets of downtown remain under water. Most residents have been allowed to return to survey damage. Most homes have scant tap water and no electricity.

Accompanied by Gov. Ed Schafer, Armey and his entourage toured the areas hardest hit. They encountered ghost-town blocks of downtown ravaged by fire and flood; sodden cars deposited willy-nilly by raging water; and the curious stares of residents watching their big green bus lumber down mud-caked streets.

Armey brought colleagues such as Ann Northrup, R-Kentucky, a House Appropriations Committee member whose state recently experienced its own destructive flood, and Martin Sabo, D-Minn., whose constituents also were inundated by the overflowing Red River.

They also traveled to East Grand Forks, Minn., just over the John F. Kennedy Memorial Bridge, which reopened Monday. Many in the town of 9,000 had felt slighted by all the attention paid to its larger neighbor city across the Red River.

To relief workers there, Armey said, "We appreciate your courage and your conviction."

To a small group of business owners clustered in the chill and rubble of downtown Grand Forks, Armey promised flexibility and "innovative" federal aid, such as community block grants.

"Don’t move away. Rebuild. If I were sitting here today, making that decision," Armey said, "I’d come back."