I first started at the Bemidji (Minn.) Pioneer as an intern in the summer of 1996. That would begin six years as a news reporter, sports reporter and copy editor for a small, six-day-per-week daily newspaper in northern Minnesota. I wrote a large range of stories from multiple beats, to features to sports, my favorite being the coverage of the Red Lake Reservation High School basketball team named the Warriors. Here is a collection of my stories from my time at the Pioneer.
April 22, 1997
By Devlyn Brooks
Staff Writer
Day three ... victims of flooding in western Minnesota and eastern North Dakota poured into the Evangelical Covenant Church on Highway 2 for the third consecutive day Monday -- with the church the first checkpoint for people seeking refuge here.
People began arriving as early as Saturday when the mandatory evacuation of Grand Forks, N.D., and East Grand Forks left and estimated 50,000 people homeless.
And some were still arriving today -- their faces showing their concern for homes they have not seen in two days and for the many other questions still left unanswered.
Beryl Blashill, who heads up the Beltrami County Emergency Operations Center, said late Monday night that 1,019 evacuees had registered with local officials by 4:30 p.m.
Whenever they arrived, volunteers at Evangelical Covenant Church were there to put some order back in their lives -- which were so rudely interrupted Saturday when the Red River flowed over dikes and defeated two towns that had fought hard for days to save their communities.
As flood victims entered the church, they were asked to fill out registration forms stating their names, where they will stay here -- if they knew -- and where they were from -- information needed to keep tabs on the large mass of evacuees that headed both east and west of the flood.
From the registration tables, the information was passed onto another station at which volunteers logged it and also pinned messages to information boards -- boards which held more than a hundred posted notes of friends and family looking for flood evacuees or vice versa.
Every hour, a list of people who have checked in at the church is faxed to other flood relief centers in western Minnesota and North Dakota, which in return fax their newcomers to Bemidji, in an effort to keep tabs on evacuees.
Elsewhere in the church, cloak rooms were stocked with much-needed supplies -- one room holding clothing, personal hygiene items and food stuff, and another storing blankets and towels.
In the west end of the building one room was stuffed with volunteers on phones, radios and ham radios -- all gathering information or passing information on to other flood relief centers. Another room was staffed with volunteer emergency medical technicians, a pharmacist and other informational staff. IN the last room, public phones were set up for use by flood victims.
Still other volunteers operated a kitchen -- providing juice, pop, coffee and food to all comers -- and waited on those who sat at tables pondering what to do next.
Finally, in the nursery, some of the youngest affected by the flood put together puzzles, colored with Crayons and rod toy cars -- under the supervision of even more volunteers.
Vickie Stomberg, a flood evacuee herself who arrived Saturday, operated the information station for four hours Monday, saying keeping busy helped to relieve some of her anxiety.
" You wake up in the morning, and you have to go some where ... you have to be with other people coming in," she said. "You can't just get your mind off of it. You have to talk to people about it."
All in all, that was what the volunteers provided here Monday -- a place to go for evacuees, a sense of order and a shoulder on which to lean. Some evacuees even were provided with money for gas, clothing and everything else that must be provided for until the evacuees can get back into their daily lives -- which could be any where from two to four weeks.
"The (volunteers) of Bemidji have more heart and empathy for such a huge number of people ... it's unbelievable. It's unbelievable," said Mary Lien, an evacuee who came here Saturday and was at the church with her mother Monday. "What this community is doing. ... It sure has restored my faith in the human race."
Lien's mother, Helen Bogan, could only muster, "All of the volunteers have been so beautiful," before her eyes welled up with tears.
"I don't know what to say. ... I don't have the words for it," she said. "'Thank you' doesn't sound like enough."
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