Safe and sound, let’s keep it that way

Talk about it

“It’s just stuff,” said the firefighter who hadn’t been home long enough in six days to get his own soaking wet items out of the basement.

“They make more toys every day,” said the man at the flood relief center, who had cars, four-wheelers and other expensive items ruined by the waters of the St. Louis River. “They can be replaced.”

We heard similar statements from many Carlton County residents in the days since the flood waters came and went so quickly. All of them were talking about their own losses, most of them significant. They weren’t folks with big bank accounts who will be able to go out and write a check to replace it all immediately, just people who realized that when it comes to what matters and what doesn’t, things like ATVs and couches and even washing machines aren’t really all that important.

And they were right. We were blessed in Carlton County. No one drowned. No one died. No one was even seriously injured in the most extreme flooding event this county has seen since officials started tracking river levels and writing it down in the record books.

In Moose Lake, the Moose Horn River crested at 19 feet last week. The previous record high was 15-feet, 9-inches. For an incredibly long time, the water was rising at a rate of 2 inches per hour.

Yet no one was hurt.

At the Minnesota Power dam in Thomson, water flow through the dam is normally between 3,000 and 5,000 cubic feet per second. At the peak of the flooding, water was rushing through the dam at an estimated 50,000 gallons per second. Yes, a lot of river water made a new path down the hill – invading even more homes – but the dam held, despite rumors to the contrary on Thursday afternoon.

Yet no one was hurt.

It’s not like residents saw it coming for days and were all prepared for it. The weather forecasts had predicted rain, heavy rain, but not eight inches of rain. Most people went to bed Tuesday night marveling at the fierceness of the rain, and woke up wondering if it would ever stop. Very few outside of law enforcement officials, Minnesota Power folks and first responders realized what a dire situation we were in Wednesday morning, and how much worse it would get as the day progressed.

Yet no one was hurt.

Of course, people had prepared for catastrophic events. Carlton County Emergency Management Director Brian Belich had been working with area law enforcement agencies, firefighters and more to make sure the county had a good plan in place. Cloquet Police Chief Wade Lamirande has been polishing up the emergency plans in Cloquet. In Moose Lake, two years before, police and firefighters had held a mock emergency drill, in which a tornado took out the bridge over the Moose Horn River, cutting off the school and the main part of town from the hospital.

Practice helps. Planning helps. People pitching in and working together helps. Dumb luck helps too.

But luck can run out. So we need to promise each other not to do anything stupid in the aftermath of the flooding. Don’t sneak into areas that are closed because of the danger from unstable ground and rushing water (like Jay Cooke State Park). Don’t electrocute yourselves, don’t work too hard and too long and have a heart attack.

Because no one has been hurt so far by the flooding. Let’s keep it that way.

Jana Peterson

Tags: carlton county, opinion