More than a quarter of a century after one of the worst natural disasters the region has ever seen, RDO Equipment Co. team members still remember how the community came together to rebuild from the 1997 spring flood that devastated communities along the Red River in Minnesota and North Dakota.
It began as the season’s eighth blizzard dropped six inches of April snow, followed quickly by freezing rain. It was the perfect recipe for a disaster that started with more than 300,000 residents losing power.
Kevin Grove, a 40-year veteran of the heavy equipment industry, remembers when then-North Dakota Governor Ed Schafer activated the National Guard to help with what began as a blizzard recovery that soon pivoted to a flood fight during that first week of April as the Red River waters continued to rise. On Saturday, April 18, residents like Grove were told to excavate their homes.
“It was a Saturday morning when the dikes breached, and many of the streets were soon flooded,” Grove said. “I grabbed what I could to move to my home’s second floor before packing a bunch of clothes since I knew we’d be gone for a while.”
Grove gathered his family members so they could stay with friends and then went to check in at the RDO store on the west side of town.
“I don’t know why I went to the store at first, but I knew there was going to be work to do once the flood waters subsided,” he said. “I grabbed a mattress from my home and threw it in the back of my pickup before driving to the store.”
More than 10 miles from the Red River’s banks, the RDO store wasn’t in danger of flooding. Grove, the store’s service manager at the time, placed his mattress in the break room upstairs.
“I didn’t pre-plan anything; I just had a feeling there was going to be a group of team members who would need to stay at the store to keep it open,” Grove said.
About five other team members joined Grove at the store. During the afternoon, they claimed rooms they would call “home for now” during the upcoming weeks and then gathered to assess the next steps.
“By Saturday night, we were buying lumber from the yard next door,” Grove said. “We connected with a contractor we knew and had worked with. With his help, we built about five bedrooms upstairs.”
The team was gearing up for what would become a very long haul for the entire community. Grove bought futons to put in the bedrooms while the contractor built a laundry room before installing a washer and dryer. Grove explains they also had a small bathroom and shower installed on the second floor. During the first few days, Grove said they didn’t fully comprehend how they would make everything work since so many people had evacuated. Nonetheless, he says the team felt determined to rebuild their community.
While the Red River’s waters were still rising, RDO agreed to take on a special job: installing emergency generators around Grand Forks and the surrounding communities. RDO partnered with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to restore essential power and communications.
“We won the contract with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers because we were the closest business to the [Grand Forks Air Force base] that could fulfill their needs,” Grove remembers. “I wasn’t entirely sure I knew how to bid on a project like that one, but I had confidence we could figure it out.” For about two and half weeks, the Red River’s crest rose until finally, with seven days left in the month, the river crept back to its banks. Grove and the other team members who transformed the store’s second floor into a living space felt relieved, but the community’s recovery effort was only just beginning.
Red River Recedes, Team Rebuilds
Grove remembers that many RDO team members who evacuated experienced extensive damage to their homes; many houses had been left without power for days or even weeks. Others were completely ruined by floodwaters. Some team members lost nearly everything they owned to the flood and now faced a lengthy cleanup process before repair work could even begin.
Along with grabbing generators and installing them at the vital service areas marked by the U.S. Army Corps agreement, Grove said his team started to hire people to create another shift to keep the store open for extended hours, allowing more community members to access necessary equipment and supplies.
“Another contractor who was an RDO customer earned the flood cleanup contract from the city,” he said. “So we helped him modify and expand his fleet so his operators could quickly clear debris off the berms.”
Even more critical than debris removal at the time was sewer restoration. City officials partnered with a Twin Cities contractor and RDO to keep sewer jetter trucks running almost 24/7.
“Sewer jetter truck operators would work all day and then drop the trucks off at 5 or 6 p.m. Then, the night shift techs would work until 11 or even 1 a.m. to get the trucks ready to work the next morning,” he said. “The entire community was working long days, and we didn’t consider any other choice but to do the same and offer our support however we could.”
Work continued like this through June. Other RDO team members from regional stores traveled and volunteered their time to clean up debris or help Grand Forks team members rebuild their homes, and Grove says the company was fully behind the team.
“RDO was really good about keeping the business going but also gave people time to reconstruct their homes or whatever they needed,” he said.
The company provided water pumps and generators so affected team members could remove water from their home’s basement. Even John Deere provided an extra shipment of generators to the store, providing that extra push of power to rebuild.
More than 27 years later, Grove says memories of the 1997 Red River Flood are still all around the RDO team in Grand Forks.
“After the flood cleanup, we broke ground on the service shop expansion that spring,” he said.
Today, the RDO service shop still serves its community and keeps vital machinery up and running. And the upstairs living spaces? New team members can still see when the RDO store became a home with its second floor's remaining washer/dryer hookups and extra rooms.
“We even have hired a technician born during the 1997 flood,” Grove remarks with a smile.
RDO Equipment Co.
Founded in 1968, RDO Equipment Co. sells and supports intelligently connected agriculture, construction, environmental, irrigation, positioning, and surveying equipment from leading manufacturers, including John Deere, Vermeer, and Topcon. With more than 80 locations across the U.S. and partnerships in Africa, Australia, Mexico and Ukraine, we deliver creative solutions so our customers can grow and build the world.
