Reopening of Minot park heralds hope after flood

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MINOT, N.D. (AP) — When Ron Merritt saw Minot's Oak Park after the peak of last summer's Souris River flooding, he despaired about making it normal again. Water had reached the eaves of the park's picnic shelters, river sediment was everywhere and a 60-foot ash tree had toppled across its band shell.

“I had a hard time believing this day would come a few months ago,” the director of the city's Park District said.

The day came Friday, with the help of donated money, goods and sweat. Minot Mayor Curt Zimbelman, former Minot banker and current U.S. Sen. John Hoeven and a group of other dignitaries began a “Weekend of Hope” anniversary celebration by reopening Oak Park, one of the city's largest and hardest-hit by last summer's floods.

More than 300 people attended the ceremony, held with children playing on park equipment a few hundred feet away.

“It's a great place to walk,” said Mike Wilz, of Minot, who was a regular Oak Park visitor with his wife, Dorthy, before last summer's flooding. “And they have the Canada geese. They're fun to watch.”

Minot has more than a dozen parks, most of which were submerged for a month or more last summer when the Souris River, swollen by melting snow and heavy spring rains, hit record levels and overran a series of emergency levees.

More than 4,100 homes were damaged, and 12,000 people were forced to evacuate. The flood destroyed two schools and forced the closing of a U.S. Highway 83 bridge, which made it difficult to travel between the north and south halves of the city.

During Friday's ceremony, Zimbelman noted that thousands of former city residents were still displaced. The Federal Emergency Management Agency made more than 2,000 mobile homes available as temporary housing, and more than 1,300 are still being used, Zimbelman said.

“This means we still have a long way to go,” he said.

The Souris, also known as the Mouse River in North Dakota, crosses from Canada's Saskatchewan province near Sherwood, in northwestern North Dakota, and flows past Burlington, Minot and Velva before turning north and re-entering Manitoba northeast of Westhope.

Oak Park covers about 90 acres and is named for the bur oaks that grow there. Its band shell has hosted weekly concerts, and the park has markets where farmers sell fresh produce twice a week in the summertime. At Christmas, a local civic club sets up displays of Christmas lights.

Pat Bolyard, a retired Minot high school teacher, said she enjoyed the solitude offered by the wooded park and its walking trail, which meanders around the park's grounds for almost a mile.

“You know you're in town, but when you're on the walking path, you kind of feel like you're not,” she said.

Volunteers from the Dakota Boys’ and Girls’ Ranch, an organization that helps troubled youth, gathered up tons of debris in Oak Park shortly after the water receded, Merritt said. Young people from a local Job Corps center pitched in, more than a dozen of whom attended Friday's ceremony.

Three weeks ago, a small army of about 60 workers from 14 rural electric cooperatives rewired the park's picnic shelters and bathrooms.

The park's walking path, which survived the flood without losing any asphalt, has been brushed off and fixed up.

A playground and “splash pad,” where youngsters can frolic in water spray, were officially back in business. It took less than a minute for the splash pad to fill with dozens of children after its water was turned on Friday afternoon.

“I think it's a big morale boost. We hear more about what we've done in the parks than any place else, just because more people see that,” said Bob Underwood, Minot's assistant city forester.

Merritt said almost all of the parks have been cleaned up and readied for summer, although the most heavily damaged park, Roosevelt, which is adjacent to the city's zoo, still needs extensive work and has not reopened.

More than 200 of the zoo's animals are being kept in about 15 zoos around the country and a wildlife park in Wichita, Kan.

The public Souris Valley Golf Course has nine holes open for play, with the layout cobbled together using the course's front and back nines. The 10th hole, for example, is now where a golfer's round begins.

Baseball diamonds at Corbett Field and Jack Hoeven Park, named for the senator's father, have been resodded. The Hoeven diamonds are fit to host elementary school baseball teams this weekend, although the park complex's bathrooms and concession stand are not ready to open, said Steve Wharton, a Park District horticulturalist.

“We'll have some (portable toilets) for the kids to use,” Wharton said.

Ron Bieri, a longtime member of Minot's Park Board who ended his service this week after 20 years, said the reopening of Oak Park was an important milestone for the community's flood recovery.

Bieri and his wife are gradually restoring the couple's two-story home, about four blocks from the park. While their work progresses, they are living in a FEMA trailer that is parked in their front yard.

Signs of the flood's devastation near the park were still evident Friday. Some homes were abandoned and overrun with weeds that have grown to waist level or higher.

One home had a flyer attached to its front door that was dated last September. Others had piles of debris in their yards as workers labored to tear out flood-damaged interiors.

“People are working on their houses and things are coming back together, but we still joke about it as ‘the ghetto,’ because it looks pretty rotten down here,” Bieri said. “Anything that I think we can do ... that greens things up, and gives people a place where they can go and have a picnic or take a walk, it's back to normal life.”

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