Parts of flood-ravaged East Grand Forks still bear battle scars
By Dave Olson
The Forum
EAST GRAND FORKS, Minn. – Griggs Park.

The Point.

The East Grand Forks neighborhoods are talked about here the way historians talk about The Little Big Horn or Gettysburg.

And although the Red River was in retreat here Tuesday and traffic in many parts of town was resuming, homes in the Griggs Park area on the near north side remained inundated.

Muddy water sat imprisoned behind dikes the floodwater easily overran two weeks before.

The clay and sandbagged dikes, sagging and disheveled in defeat, bore the scars of battle. Mortal wounds, gaping holes the size of trucks, showed where the water blasted through.

"It was like a war zone. Something you couldn’t imagine in your life. Unbelievable," said Mike Yanish, describing the battle to save East Grand Forks.

Yanish, who’s home is on the edge of the Griggs Park area, said he was lucky. Water filled his entire basement but the first floor was largely untouched. Still, he had just installed a new furnace and water heater in the basement before the flood, and most of the new siding he had purchased last fall and stacked in his backyard was gone.

"Someone in Oslo probably has it," he said.

Yanish said the weekend Grand Forks and East Grand Forks disappeared he was spreading his time between packing up belongings and working with dike building efforts in an area called The Point, where pandemonium reigned.

"A cop was down there standing on the hood of his car directing traffic," Yanish said, recalling the scene.

"Then I came back 15 minutes later and (the cop) was standing on the roof of the car and water was up to his feet," Yanish said. "One of the National Guard trucks came by and they told him ‘get on here’ and they drove away."

Yanish said his son was on a crew that fought to reinforce the dikes even as water swamped over and exploded through them.

When a large hole appeared in the dike they were working to save, "one of the guys (his son) was working with just picked up somebody’s garage and slammed that in there ... and it just exploded," Yanish said. When his son and the others finally gave up the fight they barely got out with their heavy equipment. "They went by that cop car when they left The Point," Yanish added. "My son said the (car’s) lights were about 2 feet under the water, still flashing."

Yanish said the people of the neighborhood had been desperate to save their homes. About 2 a.m. on April 12, just before the fight was lost, a man came running up to his son in water about waist deep. "The guy had a sloppy Joe and a pop in his hands and he ran up on the (bulldozer) and said, ‘Here, don’t leave us. Don’t let the dike go.’ " Yanish said.

Elsewhere Tuesday morning, LaVerda and Clayton Lamaack surveyed the damage to their Griggs Park home – from a distance.

A small amount of water and a good deal of mud prevented the Lamaacks from getting to their front door.

"We’re history," they said, greeting neighbors from across the street.

The Lamaacks’ home had been heavily flooded and their garage in the back yard was still deep in water.

But there was something different about it.

"We have a new deck," LaVerda Lamaack said, referring to a large wooden deck that had lodged against the garage.

Lamaack, a Minnesota native, said she and her husband had retired and moved back to Minnesota from Colorado two years ago.

She said insurance likely will cover 80 percent of the loss of the home, but its contents are not covered.

Lamaack said it’s likely most homes in the neighborhood will have to be scrapped.

Most of downtown East Grand Forks looked in rough shape Tuesday, but there was one place where the city held its own against the flood.

"This is the only place where we beat the Red," said acting police chief Mike Lealos, referring to the Police Department building that came out of the ordeal relatively unscathed.

Lealos credits a National Guard colonel who was using the building as a headquarters when floodwater began running in the streets.

"He said he wasn’t going to lose it, and he didn’t," Lealos said.

The Guard contingent hastily constructed a sandbag dike around the building and then held an around-the-clock vigil to keep pumps running.

The station was an island, Lealos said.

"We had docks on our front doors and docks on our back doors and they got to us by boat and National Guard vehicles," he said.

Though the city was showing signs of drying out Tuesday, officials said it likely will be four weeks before East Grand Forks will again have drinkable water and the city’s lift stations and sewer system remained inoperable.