Interview with Paul Jurgens

Interviewed by Terry Shoptaugh July 24, 1997, at Moorhead State University

TS: My name is Terry Shoptaugh. Today is the 24th of July, 1997. I'm interviewing Mr. Paul Jurgens, of KFGO Radio, about the flood of 1997. We are doing this project for the Northwest Historical Center and the Minnesota Historical Society.

Paul, let's start with some background information--where you're from, when you started at KFGO, and so forth. Project

PJ: I'm originally from Fergus Falls, and I started at KFGO in 1983; actually, March 15, 1983, so just over fourteen years.

TS: When you started out, what were you doing with KFGO Historyat that time?

PJ: I was a news reporter, started out as essentially theOral fifth person in a five-person news staff. Since then, over the last fourteen years, I've been a reporter.Society We also anchor newscasts. All of our reporters are required to present the news, as well as gather it. I guess it was about eight years ago, the news 1997directorship opened, and I applied for it, and was fortunate enough to be named the news director. of TS: Who was the news director when you started, just out of curiosity? Historical PJ: An individual by the name of Paul Newburgh hired me. Floods TS: What was the format of KFGO at that time?

PJ: Essentially the Riversame as it is today, a country-music-based station, as far as the music, but the music is really secondary.Minnesota We refer to ourselves as a full service station, meaning a lot of weather, a lot of news, and a strong personality throughout all the parts of the day. Red TS: What's the normal mix, like today, between music and on-air broadcasting of news, weather,The sports, whatever?

PJ: Depends on the time of the day, but we have a lot of weather, news, sports, essentially from 5 a.m. through 6 p.m., then there's syndicated programming as far as sports, Twins, Vikings, Minnesota Timberwolves basketball, depending on the season. So very little music during the day.

TS: Do you normally take a lot of calls? I know you did during the flood, but do you normally take a lot of calls as part of your daily broadcast?

PJ: Primarily we do in the talk-show segments. There's a talk show hosted by Ed Schultz that runs from 9:00 to 10:30, Monday through Friday, and that's called "KFGO News and Views," and that's a talk show. Boyd Christenson hosts a separate talk show called "KFGO Live," from 1:30 to 3:00, on a Monday through Friday basis. And primarily that's where the personalities interact with the public, in those day parts. But as you indicated, during the flood, essentially, the phones were open all the time.

TS: Can you tell me something about your broadcast range? You know, most of the technical details of your tower and the broadcast range approximately of the tower.

PJ: I know some. I do have an engineering license, and basically I think I Projectgot that to help me get a job, when I was out searching, and it really hasn't benefited me much because I'm not an engineer at all. But the power range of KFGO is 5,000 watts, 790 AM is the frequency, and 5,000 watts nondirectional during the day. At night we have to make some changes, so it becomes 5,000 watts directional, so at night there are areas, particularly to the south and the east and the southeast, where it's difficult toHistory get KFGO, even twenty miles away. Whereas the signal will travel, at night, north and northwest quite strongly. The reason that's done is because other stations in theOral country at 790, at night with the atmosphere, we'll interfere with them. In emergency situations,Society and many times during the flood of '97, since we are the FCC, Federal Communication Commission, designated emergency broadcast station for this area, we1997 are allowed to stay on our daytime pattern, and that will give us a range of about 250 miles in all directions, and at night, in fact, further, because the signal will travel further.of We are allowed to stay on our daytime pattern, as we call it, but we have to sacrifice revenue for that. We're not allowed to play commercials. Historical

TS: So essentially what you'reFloods saying then is at a time of an emergency, you can reach the entire valley. In fact, you can reach past Bismarck in the west, to the Twin Cities in the east and southeast, and as far as Manitoba, north. River PJ: Right. Manitoba, and Minnesotaprobably to St. Cloud. A little beyond St. Cloud, down Interstate 94, you'll start to lose the station, but, yes, a good 200-plus miles in all directions, andRed even beyond in some areas.

TS: TheWas this why KFGO was designated as the emergency broadcast station for this area?

PJ: I guess so. The station went on the air in 1948, and to the best of my knowledge, KFGO has always been the EBS station. Now the government has changed the system somewhat. It's now called Emergency Alert System. But essentially it's always been the EBS station. So when there's an emergency, we cue other stations in this market, essentially hit a button and make them aware of a natural disaster, a weather disaster. They monitor us, and then they have their own emergency broadcast procedures that they

2 go through.

TS: So people up here were used to listening to KFGO in the event of bad weather, emergency problems. I imagine that makes KFGO very popular in the rural areas?

PJ: Very much so, because many of the radio stations in this market are music-oriented, or talk-oriented, and talk-oriented isn't necessarily local. It's nationally syndicated programming. So really, twenty-four hours a day, it's the only place that many people can get news and weather information that is current.

TS: And, of course, a lot of people out in the rural areas have to worry about electricity during winter storms, other things, so they need this kind of thing. They'veProject got to have battery-operated radios on hand for this purpose.

PJ: Absolutely. I mean, they don't know when their power is coming on, they don't know what's caused the power outage, unless it's something obvious, like a windstorm or an ice storm. If the telephones are out, who are they going to call, whereHistory are they going to get the information? The radio is essentially it. Oral In this past flood winter season, one of our television stationsSociety lost its power, so that was no good. Many radio stations in the storm heading into the flood, many of them in Mayville, North Dakota; Grafton, North Dakota;1997 several other smaller stations, lost their broadcast facilities because of the ice, and we were the only, really the only source of information for many people. of

TS: I know that particular storm that began Historicallike April the 5th, that was particularly tough. You've been there since 1983. You've covered some flood situations before this past spring. 1989, there was someFloods flooding in the valley, and there's always been some flooding in the valley practically every spring. But a normal year of flood broadcast wasn't a twenty-four-hour-a-day thing, was it? River PJ: No. I never experiencedMinnesota anything like this. '89 and the summer flood of '93, which was more of a heavy rain in '93, my own home was flooded in that particular event. Never been throughRed anything like that, honestly wouldn't want to go through anything like it again, as a resident or a journalist, because as we all know, people who were involved in it, evenThe not directly, found it very stressful.

TS: This past winter, you had to make many broadcasts concerning winter storms. Insofar as radio journalism is concerned, was there already concern being expressed at the station or through the FCC or whatever, that this was going to be a particularly rough spring because of all this snow out here, that they are expecting a flood? Were they already talking about this, even before we went into the April situation?

PJ: Well, October and November, if I recall, there were predictions of it--going into

winter, we had quite a bit of moisture on the ground, and predictions of, "If we get heavy snow," and that's always an "if," we're going to have serious spring flooding. As the snow continued to mount throughout the season, it really became apparent that we were going to have some flooding. Whether it would be rural flooding, or just people that lived along the river, or serious urban flooding, nobody knew. So we started to talk about it then, about what our plan would be.

TS: Where do you normally, as news director, go for your information concerning these kinds of weather situations? You must have a group of people or organizations you've routinely established communications with.

TS: Well, we have a number of systems. We have on staff four full-time newsProject reporters. We have four fully equipped mobile unit trucks with police scanners and cell phones and two-way radios. For weather events, particularly travel, winter travel, we have a system of what we call KFGO road and weather correspondents, that are essentially law enforcement agencies within 100, 200, and in fact up to 300-mile radius, and truck stops, because we find that a lot of truckers and a lot of travelers areHistory in these places. So we call--we have a list of about sixty, and when we start to see, or get reports, via primarily National Weather Service reports, of snow or stormy Oralconditions in other areas in our adjacent area, but not in the immediate Fargo-Moorhead area,Society we start to call these places to see what the conditions are, and we generally track the storm that way until it starts to get a little closer to us. 1997

We also have what we call KFGO cell net,of which is a system, through the various cellular phone vendors, that permits travelers with a cellular phone to call our station free of charge from anywhere in our listening area byHistorical dialing pound, five, three, four, six, which is “pound-KFGO,” and that's a system that I established about five years ago with all of the cellular systems. They competeFloods with each other for subscribers, but I felt that it was necessary to have them all, because who knows what kind of phone someone will have out there. We have a meteorologist on staff. River TS: Who's that? Minnesota

PJ: Mike LynchRed is his name. Mike is based in Minneapolis, is a staff meteorologist for WCCO Radio, but also does our weather reports via phone and via satellite from the TwinThe Cities. We've measured his accuracy with a local meteorologist, and it is very comparable. We also have a long-standing tradition with the National Weather Service. In fact, up until about a year and a half ago, when they left Fargo for Grand Forks, we were the last station in the entire country to still offer daily live National Weather Service reports. The government does not allow it anymore, and they moved to Grand Forks and that particular system had to end then.

TS: What about National Weather Service in Bismarck or the Twin Cities? You don't maintain direct contact with them?

PJ: Not direct contact. We have several weather sources where we get their data. We have about two main sources and about three backups, as far as getting much of the same information. But once in a while, a system will go down and we have to have backups. So anything that they issue--the Bismarck office, the Grand Forks office, the Minneapolis office--we see it, and we can review as to whether it's something that we should maybe pay particularly close attention to, or whether it's something that's a good distance away, and we don't really have to be concerned about it.

TS: Any links to either Minnesota or North Dakota emergency management offices?

PJ: We have several links. Being the emergency broadcast station for FargoProject-Moorhead, we have a studio in the basement of the Cass County Juvenile Justice Center, and that studio is maintained. There is an antenna on the roof, and it's a studio with studio-quality capabilities, meaning there is a MARDI system that is owned by the FCC that is in that room. It's a small room, but it gives us the capability of broadcasting live from the Emergency Operations Center. History

Also, within the last two years, we have established aOral similar studio at the Richland County Law Enforcement Center in Wahpeton, and that allowsSociety their emergency management people and their sheriff to essentially pick up a microphone in Wahpeton, some forty-odd miles away, and be on our radio1997 station live in an emergency situation. And that was also funded by the government -- FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] and the FCC. of

TS: Another thing that you said was in the juvenileHistorical justice area. You call it a MARDI system? Floods PJ: It's called a MARDI system, and I can't exactly tell you what--

TS: That's an acronymRiver for something? Minnesota PJ: Well, actually it's a brand name, but in the broadcast industry and the radio industry, MARDI is, RedI think, really synonymous for a remote studio broadcast unit that delivers quality as if you were in your own radio station. There are some distance requirements, so you Thecannot go more than really ten miles with it and maintain the quality. It's not a phone line. It is a direct link to the radio station from both those agencies.

TS: So basically you've got a lot of capability here, to be prepared when an emergency hits.

PJ: We've got a lot of plans. All of our staff, not just the news and programming staff, but all of the staff in our radio stations--and we now own six radio stations--are required to pitch in, in an emergency situation like this. It's part of their job description.

TS: They understand that if there's an emergency, they may be called in?

PJ: They may be called in. In fact, there are three nonprogramming, non-news people on call, 365 days a year, around the clock, and it's on a rotating week basis and you may not be called for five years, but then you may have a situation like this where you're working many days.

TS: Let's talk about the beginning of this flood, then. The storm that helped trigger this whole thing occurred on the first weekend in April, and they were tracking that storm. The National Weather Service and others were tracking that storm, and predicting that it was going to be a violent storm, at least four or five days before it ever arrivedProject over the valley. So did you have opportunities to make preparations for that, to alert people that they, in all probability, were going to have some special needs at that time?

PJ: Yes, we did, as far as our staff. On either Wednesday or Thursday of that week, there were indications that we were going to get some sort of weatherHistory event, and whether it was going to be heavy snow or heavy rain, no one seemed to know. As it turned out, we got a little bit of both, and it started out as a rainstorm, thenOral it turned into freezing rain, and pretty soon we had a blizzard on our hands started out on a SaturdaySociety afternoon, and really continued right into Monday. 1997 TS: It varied by community, of course. In Breckenridge, it remained rain for a long time, which helped bring on their first real flood.of In Ada, it rained for a considerable amount of time, then turned to ice, which helped bring about their flooding. Here in Fargo- Moorhead, it was a combination, as you said,Historical and I've had somebody from the city engineer's office in Moorhead tell me that if it didn't turn to snow when it did, we might have had a Breckenridge situationFloods on our hands, too.

PJ: Could have very easily happened, and we were fortunate, as well, that we didn't lose the electricity like manyRiver of the other communities did. Minnesota TS: When did you folks make the decision, once that storm began and began to grow in intensity, whenRed did you make the decision to go on twenty-four hours of broadcasting throughout the storm? The PJ: I happened to be working, as my regular shift, on that Saturday morning, which would have been April 5th, and by mid to late morning, it was clear to me that we were going to have some serious problems. We have a correspondent in Breckenridge, Minnesota, by the name of Gary Rogers, and Gary works for a radio station there, KVMW, but has had a long news relationship with KFGO dating back some twenty-odd years. Oddly enough, he's also a captain on the Wahpeton, North Dakota Fire Department, and so he knows everybody in Breckenridge, Wahpeton. I made some contacts with him that morning, and they were starting to have some problems there already with flooding

because of the rainfall. I suppose by eleven o'clock, noon that Saturday, we knew that fairly soon we were going to have to go into full emergency broadcasts modes.

TS: And that meant you pulled all music off, and that you just went with twenty-four- hour announcements. How many people did you call in at that time, approximately?

PJ: Well, the entire news staff was in by noon that day, with the exception of Doug Hamilton, whose sump pump in his home had failed, and he was bailing water out of his home. He got that taken care of, and Doug was in in the afternoon. Ed Schultz, our vice president of programming, came in. Sandy Buttweiler, one of our staff announcers on KFGO, was in rather shortly. Her partner during the week, an individual by the name of Jack Sunde, was in. We knew we needed some support staff, so we startedProject to call in office personnel and pick from our on-call emergency sheet, and those people started to come in. So we had, if I recall, I suppose about by mid-afternoon Saturday, we had twelve people probably working KFGO-AM, and as I said, we have six other radio stations in the building, and those people that provide information and answer the phones and keep KFGO listeners up to date with information coming into the stationHistory -- not necessarily all of it going on the air -- also are required to make sure that those stations, maybe not as quickly as KFGO, but that those stations get the informationOral they need to get onto the air to their listeners as well. Society

TS: What's the list of those stations? 1997

PJ: KFGO-AM; KFGO-FM, which is commonlyof referred to as "Moose Country 102"; and there is KVOX-AM, KVOX-FM, referred to as "Froggy 99.5"; and we have KFGX- FM; and then we have KPHT-FM, 92.7, thatHistorical they call "Sunny 92."

TS: So there was quite a communicationsFloods setup that you could rely on, and as you said, you had power.

PJ: We had electricity.River Minnesota TS: You had power to broadcast with. Were you starting to receive phone calls by mid- afternoon, orRed early evening, from outlying areas concerning the loss of power in communities? The PJ: Yes. It started out, I think, as scattered power outages, primarily. In the evening, maybe late afternoon to evening, some areas to the north and to the west of Fargo- Moorhead, smaller communities were starting to lose power, and it seemed quite scattered, and the freezing rain, in fact, that was causing the problems, was scattered. There were some areas that were fine; there were other areas that were losing their power. Then we began to get phone calls, and started to make phone calls, to the various power agencies, the power cooperatives, in many cases.

TS: Who would do that kind of thing, when you said you started to make phone calls?

PJ: The news department. We've got all the phone numbers for all the power cooperatives up and down the Red River Valley. We started to call some of their people, basically to find out how long the power was going to be out, and it quickly became clear that they didn't know. They were starting to see lines snap under the weight of ice, and their crews, because of the inclement weather, could not get to the scene.

As we headed into Saturday evening, there were many, many communities without power. We had other radio stations around the Red River Valley that were losing their broadcast capabilities because of ice on their towers, and they started to call us, because their listeners were lost. To get their local information out, they had to relyProject on KFGO, to try and keep their listeners informed. It was Saturday evening we started to know that we were going to have some real problems and this was not going to be a short-term event.

TS: Did you have enough phone lines to handle the volume of calls that started to come in and go out, for receiving information? History

PJ: I think we have about twenty phone lines in the building,Oral and I know that that weekend, many of them were busy all the time. You couldn'tSociety get through, and that was part of the problem, too, especially for some of the emergency agencies that we deal with, and some of the power executives, who were1997 trying to call in to say, "We know that this particular city has lost power. This is what we're trying to do about it." But many times they couldn't get through, and that did becomeof a problem.

We do have a couple of unlisted numbers thatHistorical are not listed, we don't publicize them. We started to give those numbers out to some of those agencies so they could get hold of us. They're not numbers we giveFloods to the public. In fact, they're numbers that many of the employees don't know, but we have to have them in case we have to get hold of each other. And in this case, we had no choice but to give out those unpublished numbers, so people could get through.River Minnesota TS: When you were talking to power companies, for example, in past emergencies, who would you normallyRed talk to? Like an engineer in the company, or something like that?

PJ: TheThat's usually where we start. We have some numbers for their dispatch centers. Northern States Power, Otter Tail Power Company, Cass County Electric, just some of the examples. So we usually, in a case like this, where we have a power outage, we'll call essentially their service center, and we may be talking to one of their dispatchers, who dispatches the crew and keeps an eye on their computers and their system.

TS: This is not a person who normally would go on the air and talk on the air with you live?

PJ: No, no. In fact, very rarely. So we generally get some basic information from them in typical power-outage situations, but when we start to get calls from their public information people, their corporate communication people, that are calling us from home, in this particular event, trying to get on the air to let their customers know what's going on, we know we've got a serious situation when these people are calling us from their homes.

TS: And they're contacting you now; they're initiating these calls?

PJ: Yes, we initiated them to begin with, but as radio stations started to drop off the dial, up and down the AM dial, and many of the FM stations here, even in Fargo and Grand Forks went down, we couldn't get to them fast enough. They started to callProject us.

TS: So basically what had happened here is that after you had gone into essentially an emergency mode to deal with the storm, to get out information and to gather information, pretty soon you began to realize that a lot of these companies are themselves in a real emergency mode, because they're calling other people in, too,History to get information out, to coordinate what's going on. That's what I began to notice when I was listening to the radio that weekend. The longer it went, when you went intoOral Saturday night, Sunday morning, now all of a sudden you were starting to do on-air interviewsSociety with power executives, with emergency management people, with Red Cross and National Guard people, as they began to talk about evacuating people out of1997 Ada and things like that. All of sudden they were appearing on the line with you as live call-ins. of PJ: Well, in typical situations, you know, typical weather situations, sure, we'll put people live on the air. But oftentimes, as newsHistorical reporters, we'll interview them over the phone, you know, quickly turn around the tape and prepare a story. In this case, we had no time to do that. I mean, ifFloods we would have done that, people would have had to wait too long for the information. So we essentially called and said, "Who are you, where are you from, and are you ready to go on the air?" And that's kind of the way it continued for several days. River Minnesota TS: At some point during that week, or that weekend, did it ever strike you that you were going back Redto the old days of radio, when just about everything that happened, happened live? The PJ: Well, we still do a lot of live broadcasting on our station, fortunately, which I think is good. But, yes, it was certainly fly by the seat of your pants. We do fly by the seat of our pants quite a bit on KFGO. I don't think the listeners know it, but we do get real close to deadlines and go on the air many times not having the information that we're going to broadcast in our hand, and suddenly it appears, or we can say something until it comes to us.

But, yes, it was kind of like the old days of radio when I grew up in Fergus Falls, listening

to the local radio station, where everything was live, and the people that were on the air were actually live on the air talking to you, and the information was immediate. It was coming right there. You just don't hear that as much as you used to anymore.

TS: In the past, when you've talked to people on the air, as you said, you've got a chance to interview them on tape, which means you've had a chance to prepare your questions, they've had a chance, usually, to prepare their statements, if they're representing a company or something, and this is open-mike stuff.

PJ: All that went out the window. We had to wing it, and I think fortunately most of what went out, 99 percent of what went out over the air, was professional-sounding radio. But there were some problems. We had some technical problems and sometimesProject the phone line didn't quite work, and maybe we'd have some squeal. But when you're dealing with a situation like that, you've just got to do the best you can.

TS: Were you worried about any of the information that went out during that first weekend or in the days that followed, when power was out inHistory so many areas, was there any information that was going out through some of these phone calls that worried you? Oral PJ: Yes, there was. Some of the information from basic residents,Society they weren't representing anyone, they weren't representing a company, they weren't representing any emergency agency, and many of them would1997 repeat rumors that they'd heard, or speculate on what they thought the weather was going to do, what they thought the flood was going to do, what they thought was going to happenof to other cities that hadn't lost power yet, and that kind of troubles me when really unsubstantiated information goes on the air, but again, you've got to try to temper that and letHistorical people know that this is not an official word, that this is someone's opinion, perhaps. Floods TS: I remember at one point, I think it was on that Sunday, April the 6th, and I don't remember where it began, but at one point, I remember someone talking to Boyd Christenson, and startedRiver advising people how to hook their own power up. That set up a whole long series of calls Minnesotaand responses to calls, and responses to the responses, of people talking about ways that you could figure out a way to run your own power, some of which soundedRed like a good way to kill yourself, when you listened to it.

PJ: TheYes. Well, I'm sure it could have, and I think we were fortunate that people didn't take that advice. I think the original call may have come from some people in a rural area of southeastern North Dakota, and they were without power, and it sounded as though they were bound and determined to hook up to the transformer and somehow re-route the downed power lines. Quickly, some power company people heard that. They were monitoring the station up and down the valley, and they called in, and, fortunately, advised people that this is not something that you want to do, even if you're an electrician. I mean, you're dealing with 115,000-volt lines, and to not know what you're doing and trying to restore electricity to your house is absolutely ludicrous.

TS: Then there were many that called in, too, and started advising how you could use a generator to restore power in your house, how to hook it somehow into your lines or power box.

PJ: Into your fuse box, yes.

TS: Into your fuse box. All sorts of calls began to come in about that. Some people would say, "Oh, try this," and "No, no, try that." I remember Boyd and maybe Ed Schultz saying, "You know, I don't know if this is a very good idea to try some of this stuff."

PJ: Well, one thing that we don't use at KFGO that many other stations use,Project is a delay, and by a delay I mean that when a call comes in before it goes on the air, there is a delay from the time the person on the phone speaks to the time that it goes through the processing and hits the air, and the delays can vary, I think, from three to seven seconds. We don't use a delay. The delay allows broadcasters to essentially screen the call before it hits the air. They hear it in their headphones some seconds beforeHistory it actually hits the air, and anything perhaps obscene, maybe something that's unsubstantiated, we can keep it off the air before people actually hear it. We don't use that.Oral There are times that we wish we would, but, fortunately, I think, over the years we've maybe Societylucked out a little bit by not using a delay. They're difficult to work with from a broadcast sense because it can be confusing until you're used to working with a1997 delay -- for the broadcasters themselves -- because you hear it in the phone and it doesn't come into your earphones, per se, for several seconds, and it can be quite confusing.of So we don't have one. I don't think there are any plans to install one, but that particular weekend some of the information that people were trying to get out to others, maybeHistorical it would have been good to have one that weekend. Floods TS: Well, of course, now anyone who listened to KFGO during the first week of April, as the storm hit and as flooding seriously began in several of the communities, anyone who listened for at leastRiver an hour would have recognized that nine out of ten callers, if not as many as ninety-five out ofMinnesota a hundred, something like that, were earnestly giving out helpful information, rather than pursuing a particular agenda. Red PJ: Yes, I would say that's true. Most of the people were trying to help their neighbors and Theother people that were in a similar situation. You are always going to have some people that just want to get on the radio. They really have nothing to add. I don't know why they would go on and give erroneous information, but people tend to do that, and we've got to be very careful and listen to them very closely to see what kind of information they're giving out, and if it is wrong, or if it isn't quite correct, maybe get someone on the air that has some expertise, to set the record straight.

TS: In the case of all these speculations and suggestions concerning hooking up your power, whether it was in your home or in your community or whatever, did some of your

11 people specifically try to call someone from the power company to say, "Would somebody come on and make a comment about this?"

PJ: We didn't have to, because the power companies were listening, and several of them called and said, "Please, we've got enough problems right now. We don't need people getting electrocuted."

TS: And they were concerned about their own people out trying to restore power in the lines.

PJ: Absolutely. If there's somebody out there fooling with a high-voltage transmission line while their crews are out there, who knows what's going to happen outProject there. And the weather was such that, really, people shouldn't have been out at all.

TS: How long were some of your people on the air?

PJ: Well, it's difficult to say, because the month kind of all runsHistory together, the month of April, and into May. I know that Saturday, myself, I knew there was weather coming, so I got to work about 4:30 in the morning, and I believe IOral got home Sunday. That would have been 4:30 Saturday morning, and I got home about 2 a.m. Sunday,Society for about three hours, just in time for my electricity to go out. I was going to try to catch some sleep and my electricity went out, and my sump pump went1997 out.

TS: That's right. There was a section of southof Fargo that did lose power.

PJ: I never thought that I would be threatened.Historical I live in a newer area of south Fargo, and the power lines are underground. My concern was, knowing the power system somewhat, that while lines in my neighborhoodFloods may not go down because they're underground, what about the transmission lines feeding Fargo and coming into the area? What's going to happen to those? River TS: And some of those runMinnesota along the river, too.

PJ: Absolutely.Red So you don't know if the poles are going to go into the river, if they're going to snap under the ice. It was a very scary situation. I knew I had a lot of responsibilityThe at my place of employment, and the last thing I needed was to have problems at my home. Fortunately, my power was back on in about thirty minutes. But as my power went out, about 2 a.m., as I said, we started bailing water from the sump pump, because we were afraid that the sump hole would fill, and we'd start to have basement flooding. Of course, we had no idea how long the power would be out.

I had a cordless phone, in my basement so I got on the air. I called and I said, "My power's out here in south Fargo." It happened to be that there was another south Fargo resident on the Cass County electric system who was also without power. The station

12 conferenced us, and we were both discussing the situation with each other, live on the air. He was in Briarwood; I was in south Fargo. As we were talking, the power came back on.

TS: Do you remember what his name was?

PJ: His name was Dick Knudsen, R.D. Knudsen. We were discussing what we were going to do, and what people now in this particular area of south Fargo and sections south of Fargo should do, and the power came back on. It was funny to other people, not funny to me at that time, but the power in my house came back on and at this time I was in the garage, still on the phone, talking to the station, and the lights came back on, and I breathed a sigh of relief. About that time, one of my children opened the garage door and turned off the light and I said, "Oh! There went the power again." Well, actually,Project he had just turned off the light. So the power was back on, and fortunately, we maintained power at my home for the duration.

TS: Of course, there were also some fairly serious power problems in West Fargo. In fact, for a number of days, a good portion of West Fargo was withoutHistory power. I guess that was the closest thing to the Fargo-Moorhead area. It was the closest community that had some severe problems, so you heard a lot from West Fargo Oralpeople during this time. Society PJ: Yes, we had a reporter out there that Saturday night. Don Haney was the reporter that was in West Fargo that night, during the storm,1997 as the power started to go down there. It was unusual because NSP serves West Fargo and also serves most of Fargo, and so we anticipated that as the ice began to build ofon the lines in West Fargo, and on the western stretches of Fargo, that Fargo would soon follow and the ice would move into Moorhead, and pretty soon the entire metro area might beHistorical in a blackout. By the grace of God, I guess the ice--we didn't get the buildup in Fargo that they got even just a mile or two to our west. Fortunately, most electricFloods customers in Fargo-Moorhead proper were able to keep their electricity.

TS: Once your powerRiver was restored, I take it you went back into the station? Minnesota PJ: I did catch a couple of hours of sleep and I believe about 5 a.m. Sunday, I was back in my news truck,Red heading back into work. And if I recall, it was not a very easy drive.

TS: TheBy then they had pretty much told everyone to get off the streets.

PJ: Get off the streets, and certainly not travel outside of town. As I said earlier, our vehicles are equipped with cell phones and two-way radios, and we can go on the air from anywhere and any time. When we're traveling in these type conditions, we generally, many times, are on the air, as we're driving. We do a lot of weather and storm reporting in the winter, and even in the summer months when there is severe weather that is threatening. One thing that we don't do, and some people will maybe try to argue, but we do not drive on closed roads. Once a road closes, our vehicles are off it. In fact, in several

storms this winter, I made the decision that -- while perhaps the purpose of us being out there in those poor conditions is to tell people that they shouldn't be out there -- “well, should we be out there then” is the question that we're asked. The reason we're out there is to try to discourage travel. We're trying to describe how deplorable the conditions are, but really, a written policy that we have, is once a road's closed, our people get off it as well. We're not going to be driving on closed highways.

TS: I'm assuming this is one of the occasions where you find that talking to people, or going out and seeing people, at truckstops, is really helpful to describe road conditions.

PJ: Absolutely. The veteran drivers, especially the drivers of eighteen-wheelers, you know, they sit up higher, they have better visibility. It seems as though in Projectbad weather, they can go longer before they have to pull in, and it's a good indication when over-the- road truckers start to pull off the interstates, that probably most people should be off those roads as well.

TS: Are you set up at KFGO for weather emergencies or otherHistory emergencies? Are you set up to let people stay in the station for long stretches at a time, as this long-term type of emergency broadcasting goes on? Oral Society PJ: No, we're not. In fact, we are putting a major addition onto our broadcast center, and one of the recommendations that unfortunately1997 did not make it into the final architectural plan was shower facilities, because there have been days, years in storm events that staff have stayed there for two and three days.of I mean, it wasn't safe to leave. So, we are not.

We have, it seems, enough four-wheel driveHistorical vehicles and enough staff that are used to driving in this type weather that we can usually get provisions--food and that type of thing--if we have to stay thereFloods for long periods. And if we can't, given our connections with law enforcement and some of the disaster relief agencies, EVAC, which is a local four-wheel-drive group, if we can't get something we need, there has not been a time that at least someone hasn'tRiver been able to get it to us. Minnesota TS: During this past April, there must have been times when there were people at the station for twoRed or three days at a stretch then, too.

PJ: TheThere was.

TS: Where did they sleep?

PJ: On the floor, in chairs, anywhere. I mean, we had some sleeping bags laid out where people would just crash for a couple of hours. There was a lot of activity around the building, so it certainly wasn't a restful sleep, but it was just try to catch a little rest where you can. Boyd Christenson, I know, one example, I recall him sleeping in an office for a couple of hours, sitting in a chair. Not a very comfortable chair, just an office chair, and

14 he just laid his head down and took a little nap. So that's what we are forced to do sometimes.

TS: What about food? You mentioned food. Where did you get food from?

PJ: Well, in this particular case, the April, the weekend event that started this whole month of disaster, as people came in, many of them brought things with them, because they knew that they didn't know when they were going to go home. So people would bring a twelve-pack of pop, people would bring chips, people would bring bread. There were enough businesses open, and some closing, restaurants closing, that they would bring us food on their way home. That Saturday and Sunday, we had more food in the building, that we didn't even know where it came from, than we could eat.Project There were even private citizens who began to bring in turkey that they had made for us. As an example, a woman brought in a 25-pound turkey, in the middle of a blizzard. We don't know how she got there, but turkey and all the trimmings, that just showed up Sunday. We had turkey. Pizzas from various pizza joints. Hardy's is a business that is close to our station, and in bad weather, they're listening to us, and they knowHistory we're probably getting hungry, and they'll ship over three dozen hamburgers. They've done that over the years. Oral TS: What was the station looking like by the middle of April,Society with all this going on? There must have been times when there were bags laying around, or, you know, I mean, I'm not talking about in the broadcast area, per1997 se, but--

PJ: It was in the broadcast area. of

TS: It was? Historical

PJ: Yes. It was a total mess,Floods and in fact, we're in the midst of this construction project, so we still have delayed some clean-up. In fact, my newsroom is certainly not like it was in the middle of April, because we had so much paper and there was so much information coming in and dataRiver coming in on the fax, and out of our news computers, and stories we'd written, that it was just a mess,Minnesota just a pit, and it was hard to find a place to set something. We've cleaned it up somewhat since then, but since we're sort of in the transition of an expansion remodelingRed project, it still isn't back to the way it was, and we're kind of waiting for the new building to get done so we can put things back the way they should be. The

TS: Does anyone claim to have held the record for being in the building -- I mean, just out of curiosity?

PJ: Well, I don't think so. This storm, or this particular weather event, I was there quite a distance. I go back to 1984, in a blizzard, the February 4th, 1984 blizzard, that snuck up on Fargo-Moorhead on a Saturday afternoon, and there were four people that ended up losing their lives up in north Fargo on that particular storm. That storm, I and another

announcer by the name of Bill Hoverson, who's now in private business in Fargo, we were the first two in that Saturday afternoon, as the storm, it was just like a blanket, came down, and there was very little advance warning. I believe there, Bill and I, because of the weather, it was difficult for other staff to get in, I think we were both on the air for thirty- seven hours, not constantly on the air, but not very far away from a microphone. I think I got a two-hour catnap in that particular stretch.

This flood, and this started out as a blizzard, there were so many people around the building, answering phones, doing whatever could be done, to help the effort, that we lost track of what day it was. I mean, you didn't know if Jim, as an example, had been there since Saturday, or if he had just come in fresh Sunday morning. It was just somewhat organized chaos. Project

TS: Were there occasions when anyone was broadcasting after being on the air, off and on the air, for a long stretch over a couple of days, where they began to just kind of lose track of what was going on, or would they lose track of what they were talking about? History PJ: Yes, that happened to a couple of people. Don Hall, one of our staff announcers, I think it was that Sunday night we finally had to take himOral off the air because he was starting to get a little goofy, and he'd been on, he came on SundaySociety morning, and he was on for quite a stretch. He wasn't on by himself, but he was on for a number of hours in a relief role, then he was back on Sunday night,1997 but he never left the station and he hadn't had much sleep. of I also recall Boyd Christenson, at one point, and this may not have been in the first weekend, but it was sometime during the courseHistorical of the flood event, that Boyd really just had to get off the air. He realized that he wasn't making any sense, and it was fatigue. Floods TS: As the melting occurred, as the Red River began to rise, as the overland flooding began around Fargo-Moorhead, and even before that, did you make arrangements for any aerial broadcasting?River Minnesota PJ: We did. Our executive vice president, Ed Schultz, is a pilot, a private pilot, owns his own aircraft.Red We also contracted with an individual in Galesburg, North Dakota, who has a helicopter, and there's also another private pilot in Fargo named Victor Gelking, and VictorThe was on call, essentially, throughout the flood for us. He's a private pilot, and if Ed Schultz wasn't available, if the helicopter couldn't get down from Galesburg, Victor Gelking was ready to take us up at any time. Those flights were really determined on a daily basis. Our news and programming staff would get together briefly in the morning, kind of decide what we were going to try to cover that day, and there was so much to cover that it was difficult. But we'd check on the availability of an aircraft, and if one was available, if not daily, we'd try to get up every other day.

TS: If I recall, there was an occasion when Doug Hamilton was up, I think, with the

16 gentleman you were talking about, Victor Gelking. Wasn't his own farm or home or something flooded?

PJ: Yes. Victor lives south of Fargo, and that was an area that was threatened by lowland flooding, and backup from the Wild Rice and Red rivers, and Victor did sustain some damage in his home. His home wasn't lost, but the lower level was flooded, and there really wasn't much he could do until the water began to recede, so he just figured he may as well take us up.

TS: As the flooding really began to develop, did you send people out to Ada or to Breckenridge? I know we haven't even gotten yet to the Grand Forks, East Grand Forks area, but did you send people out to the Ada-Breckenridge area as heavy floodingProject began in both of those areas? Ada, as I recall, evacuated a good portion of the town. Breckenridge, there was some evacuation. There were quite a few neighborhoods cut off by flooding.

PJ: We were in Breckenridge-Wahpeton, not that first weekend,History because I had a concern that if I sent a reporter to that area, because of the changing weather, they wouldn't get back, and I didn't know when they'd get back. We haveOral a working relationship with Channel 11, KVLY Television, in Fargo, and they had a reporterSociety in place in Breckenridge-Wahpeton that Saturday, who was available via phone to keep us up to date on what was happening. As I mentioned earlier,1997 Gary Rogers, who was a veteran newsman there, works for the radio station in Wahpeton, is also a member of the fire department, was on our air almost constantly.of So I thought that our resources could be better used by staying in Fargo, at least that particular weekend. Historical When Ada started to get flooded, myself and Don Haney, I believe it was a Monday morning that we got word thatFloods they were beginning to evacuate Ada, very early in the morning. We really didn't know how serious it was. Was half the town going to be evacuated? Was the entire town going to be evacuated? We didn't know. River At one point, I was going toMinnesota head up there myself, but then we caught word that the National Guard was coming in to help evacuate the city, and we knew that it was a serious situation,Red so both Don Haney and myself, early that morning, headed to Ada and spent the whole day there. The TS: At this point, you're beginning to get in touch with other groups now as well, not just National Weather Service people. By then you're running into Army Corps of Engineers people, National Guardsmen. FEMA people were beginning to show up at that point. Were the chances to talk to them, pretty much catch as catch can, or were arrangements made for regular reports, or what?

PJ: Well, we tried to prepare for this event as much as we could, but it got much more serious than I think most people thought. I tend to be an optimist in life, and I never think

things are going to get as bad as they sometimes are, and I guess that's just my nature. But in preparation for this, as I said, we started talking about it in the fall, and probably began real flood coverage in December, at least behind the scenes. One thing that I did was to attend staff meetings of various agencies, not as a reporter, but as a facilitator of information. I wanted the background. There were beginning to become weekly and biweekly meetings of various agencies--the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, city officials, just a host of agencies. Law enforcement. And they would meet privately, basically. It wasn't a news conference, but it was meetings that they had, and I basically invited myself and went to those meetings. And again, not as a reporter. I wasn't looking for a story. I just wanted to know for my own background what their plan would be and how we could work with them. I had a serious concern about the coordination of volunteers in this community, because in past years, there was a lot of confusion and very littleProject coordination about the call for volunteers, who's in charge of it. That was a point that I brought up at the meeting, and I think that it--well, I know that it helped lead to a plan through the Volunteer Center of volunteer coordination.

TS: You're talking about Fargo? History

PJ: Fargo and Moorhead, yes. For the volunteer effortOral that was coordinated through the Volunteer Center. Society

TS: You said you're in a south Fargo development.1997 Which one is that?

PJ: I'm north of Rosewood, on 15th Street.of The particular name of my subdivision--I'm not in a subdivision, but the development escapes me. Historical TS: That's okay. Would that put you north of 40th? Floods PJ: Right. I'm on 38 and a half, so a block and a half north of what was built as the contingency dike. And going into the flood--I live on a corner, and my house is higher than the other homesRiver in that area, and I was never very concerned about my own home flooding, until I was in theMinnesota Rose Creek-Rosewood area, talking to a gentleman who was kind of coordinating some sandbagging, and it turned out that he was a contractor, and he told me thatRed he built nine of the homes in the Rosewood subdivision. I said, "Well, I live up the street here, north," and I said, "but, you know, I don't have anything to worry about."The And he informed me that that part going north was actually lower than the homes that he built in the Rose Creek area, so that if there were a breach in the dike, the water would be coming to my house, and to much of Fargo, in fact.

TS: This would have been around April 15th, I'm assuming?

PJ: That would have been about that time, yes.

TS: That was when serious water was beginning to break out and move across over land

to south Fargo. And of course, in north Fargo, you had the Oak Grove neighborhood was suddenly flooded, after one evening when something gave way there. By then, were you having friends and family threatened by overland water?

PJ: Well, you know, even on the weekend of the 5th and 7th, we had at least two employees of our radio station--one lives in the Oakport township area, north of Moorhead, and another one lives in Kragness, Minnesota, north of Moorhead, and the rivers began to rise there, and in fact, that first Saturday, they flooded. Their homes began to flood, and so we had, you know, early on, we had employees that were dealing with flooding problems. Fellow staffers that weren't helping at the station essentially made it up to their homes and tried to do what they could. Project When I learned that my house was actually vulnerable, after thinking for months that it wasn't, a friend of mine sandbagged my window wells as a precaution, because I certainly didn't have time to do it. Any time that I could, I would get home to check my sump pump during the entire event. Because I have had sump pump failure before and not been home, and flooded the basement, so I've been through that before,History and was quite concerned about my own situation. Oral TS: Of course, once all this began, the rumor mills began again,Society too, didn't they? I mean, not just over the radio, but also concerning who's volunteering, who isn't, what's going on in neighborhoods with people that are using 1997water while everybody's sandbagging, people that are stealing sandbags. How much did the news services get involved with that? of PJ: Well, you know, it was essentially wall-to-wall coverage on our station, and there were times that things were said and things Historicalwere reported, not by the newspeople, generally, but things that were on the air that we didn't even know had been said, because we're so busy that we can't monitorFloods the air signal all the time. But, yes, it was difficult to control what was said, and we'd get calls into the station or into the newsroom, and some went on the air, some did not, of, "Did you hear about (hypothetically) the broken dike in such and such neighborhood?"River We really tried to control that, because it could cause a panic situation, and we wouldMinnesota never go on the air and report that without verifying it.

There were Redseveral occasions where we had erroneous reports that we got a phone call on. They didn't go on the air. The responsible thing to do, and what we did, was to try to verifyThe this. There were dozens of examples, that people would call with something they had heard, or had thought had happened, or they thought they heard of a major breach in a dike or a sandbag levee somewhere in the Fargo-Moorhead area, as an example, and you know, thought people ought to know, and thought we should put it on the air, and as we did some further checking, it was totally, totally false.

TS: One example I can remember very vividly is a rumor that circulated that Moorhead's water system had been contaminated by the river.

PJ: That started at Concordia College when they had some back-up, I believe, in some dorm room. We got the report, I think, from the college itself. It was actually a phone call from a student whose dorm was flooded, and they told us that the sewer system at Concordia had backed up. We got another phone call that said, "Yes, looks like the whole city's going to back up." I sent a reporter over there immediately. This was in an afternoon, I believe during the week, and before we got on the air, we had to verify that. As he was en route to the college to try and get the right information, we were able to get hold of a representative from Concordia, and Moorhead Public Service and if I recall, I think we conferenced them on the air live, and got it all straightened out.

There was also the rumor that--and in fact, this was, I believe, the fault of the Moorhead Police Department -- that the Woodlawn dike had breached. In fact, they sentProject us a fax one afternoon that said the Woodlawn Park dike had breached, or was in danger of breaking, and this is a serious situation, people in that neighborhood should be prepared to evacuate. It was on City of Moorhead Police Department stationery. We knew it was an official statement. We would have put it on the air immediately, and three, four minutes later, the mayor calls me, personally. History

TS: This was Morris Lanning. Oral Society PJ: Morrie Lanning, the mayor of Moorhead, and he called and said the release was wrong and the Moorhead Police Department1997 had jumped the gun. There were concerns with the dike, but it was not in imminent danger. So he said, "Can you correct it?" and I said, "Mayor, how about you? Let's go onof the air, and let's straighten this thing out." But there again, that was a case of the agency overreacting, and I'm sure it was a lack of communication between people at the scene.Historical

TS: As the flooding grew worseFloods in the Valley, and in many ways, Fargo-Moorhead got off lightly, although there was that very scary week when they discovered, for example, that the readings on the river scales, or the river gauges, appeared to have been inaccurate, and the river was goingRiver higher than they expected. Then, of course, the rivers broke out, and overland flooding occurred,Minnesota but compared to some of the other communities that are here in the valley, we got off somewhat lightly, I would guess you could say. Red It was at the time that you were referring to, when rumors were beginning to circulate, that Theanother thing occurred, as flooding was getting worse in many of the areas. Obviously, the river level was getting higher and higher in Grand Forks and East Grand Forks, they were beginning to get worried. The National Weather Service was giving revised forecasts as to the crest that would occur up there. It was about that time, wasn't it, that a lot of attention started to focus on people who were, for want of a better term, rubberneckers? Tourists were getting out and driving through neighborhoods that were trying to feverishly sandbag, and bringing their camcorders to record the event for history or whatever. Was there any attention given to that at KFGO?

PJ: Yes. As a field reporter, and I'm the news director, but I still like to report, and I don't like to sit around the building, I saw a lot of that. The authorities would urge people not to, and I think sometimes that's kind of like saying, "Don't follow the fire truck." It sometimes encourages and has the reverse effect.

As I traveled the Valley area and the Fargo-Moorhead metro area, traffic was a problem, and especially in many of the seriously flooded areas--Oak Grove, South Acres, south Fargo and Rose Creek. But it was difficult because of the volunteer effort that eventually began to come together here, to determine if these people were volunteers, if they were friends going to help friends, or if they were just, as you say, rubberneckers or sightseers. It was a problem. Project I think that we're fortunate, besides escaping the brunt of the flooding, that there weren't probably some serious accidents involved, for people not paying attention. Watching heavy equipment, per se, is an example of this, and I think that was a problem. I don't know what you can do. Police did threaten to cite people if they had no business in a particular neighborhood. But again, it's difficult to know if they'reHistory there for a legitimate purpose or if they're just out there looking around, getting in the way. Oral TS: As you say, they don't carry a sign that says, "I'm just watchingSociety and want to see what's going to happen." 1997 PJ: No. And if someone were to ask them what they're doing there, they'd probably pick up a sandbag. of

TS: When you were traveling about, runningHistorical into FEMA people, running into National Guard people, running into city officials, could you discern the tension level growing, as the river was continuing to rise?Floods

PJ: Oh, absolutely. I worked very closely, as our entire staff did, but especially our newspeople who wereRiver out in the field, with city officials. Fargo, as an example, Dennis Walaker, the operation managerMinnesota for the Public Works Department, his boss, Public Works Director Pat Zavoral, and even the mayor, Bruce Furness. There were often times that I'd run Redinto these guys out in the field, and you could tell, certainly they had long days and long nights, but you could tell, as it looked like perhaps we were on the brink of a disaster,The they were getting very concerned. As days went on, we'd have little victories, we'd have little losses, we'd lose a couple homes, but they'd stave off the water in another neighborhood. But they were getting very tense and under extreme pressure. They had some major, major decisions to make, especially with the contingency dikes, which really could have inundated some areas to spare others, and, yes, they were getting a little short. There was no question about that.

TS: Of course, right when that tension level had reached its height in Fargo-Moorhead, like you said, they called a press conference to say that they were starting a contingency

21 dike across 40th south, to prepare for the very worst, before, they said, the infrastructure of the city was completely inundated. It was right as that was occurring that everything gave way in Grand Forks, East Grand Forks.

PJ: Right. Yes, we were building a dike down here on that Friday, and most people were paying attention to what was happening here. The Lincoln Park dike, the Riverside Park dike, at Grand Forks that night, started to give way, and flooding of a magnitude that we had never seen in this area. Our staff were starting to feel pretty good about the effort we'd done and about how, "We're going to beat this thing as a community," and then Grand Forks started to give way, and we're pretty well stretched resource-wise, people have put in days, but Grand Forks is in our coverage area, and the Friday that the dike went up in south Fargo, the Saturday that the southside subdivisions were--youProject know, thousands of people were helping out, Grand Forks started to go. We knew that sooner or later, we were going to have to get up there and cover this.

That night, downtown Grand Forks started on fire, and I did some checking with some people. Again, we have a working relationship with Channel History11, that has a bureau in Grand Forks, so we thought, "Well, we'll be able to get some things from them." Well, they had problems at their station. They had to evacuateOral it eventually. We really didn't want to go to Grand Forks personally, but we had to. I mean,Society there was no other way around it. We knew that it was difficult to get there, because the interstate had already been closed. We were essentially taking torn1997-up state roads to get there, but that Sunday afternoon, as it looked like Fargo and Moorhead had beaten the worst here, I had to make a decision -- somebody better get up to Grandof Forks by Monday, because the fire had been out and this was Sunday afternoon, and we're looking pretty good here. But all of our staff was pretty well shot. I mean, we hadHistorical been going in shifts, working eighteen-, twenty-hour days for a couple of weeks at this point. And so who do I select, was what it came down to. Floods

This is Sunday afternoon, and I thought, "Well, I'm going to try to take a nap, and then I'll make the decision."River I guess I couldn't sleep, and I told my wife, I said, "I'm going to Grand Forks." About that Minnesotatime, the network, CBS radio network, that we had worked with very closely through this event, and became, obviously, national news for many, many days, Redthey called and they were somewhat disappointed in the coverage they were getting out of their affiliate in Grand Forks, and they asked if we would go to Grand ForksThe for them as well.

TS: Do you know who made the request specifically? Was it CBS News out of New York?

PJ: CBS News, yes. CBS Radio News out of New York called us. One of their producers called me at home on Sunday afternoon and said, "Are you going to Grand Forks?" and I said, "Well, eventually, but I don't know who and I don't know when," and they said, "Well, we really need some coverage up there." And I said, "Well, I'll get back to you."

I tried to take a nap, got up, told my wife, I said, "We've got to go to Grand Forks." She said, "Who's going to go?" and I said, "Well, most of the reporting staff is shot. I'm not much better, but why don't you run and get me some waders, a rain suit, pack my car full of food," because there had been no facilities in Grand Forks.

TS: Could she find you any waders in Fargo by that time?

PJ: She got me a pair for $125 at Fleet Farm, and actually went out there and spent $250 in special equipment for me, that I didn't know if I'd use. In fact, I didn't use most of it and returned some of it. She packed me. It was odd, we’d had first communion for my eight-year-old daughter, and so I had a house full of relatives, so I kind ofProject took that Sunday off, for personal reasons, and I just said I had to do it. But it was late afternoon, the company was leaving, we had to get to Grand Forks, and she went out and made these purchases of special equipment, had packed my jeep, my station-assigned vehicle, full of food, pop, water, extra clothes, because I had no idea how long I'd be there, and I set out for Grand Forks. History

TS: How did you get there? Oral Society PJ: I took Interstate 94, the state Highway 18, through Casselton, and Highway 18 to, I guess, Mayville, and then got back on the interstate.1997 Usually you can get to Grand Forks in a little over an hour, but the shape of that road, because of all the heavy truck traffic over the weeks, the state highway was gravelof in many places, broken pavement, and there was a lot of traffic. In fact, the National Guard was escorting vehicles at forty miles an hour in many areas of that highway, so it wasHistorical a long, long trip.

On the way up, I monitored GrandFloods Forks radio stations, some of which had come back on from the storm of a couple of weeks earlier, and just tried to get a feel as to what was going on, and see what they were doing, and see where I should go. I also had talked to Channel 11. I'd evenRiver talked to a competitor up there, Channel 8, WDAZ. I know their news director, Mike Brue,Minnesota and I know him from years gone by, and I just called him to ask him, "Is there anyplace to stay? When I come into town, where should I go?" and he gave me theRed best advice he could.

I gotThe into Grand Forks that Sunday evening, and had to use the bathroom, so I stopped at a convenience store, not thinking--well, the place was open but they had no water, they had no bathroom facilities. I don't know what I was thinking. So then I headed in toward town, on 32nd Avenue South in Grand Forks. I think I was the first reporter to notice a problem-- well, there was no one around, and I hadn't reached the National Guard checkpoint. I noticed that a mall across from the Columbia Mall, the strip mall, it looked like there had been some sort of break-in, and I got closer, and sure enough, there had been windows broken out of some businesses there, that had been boarded up, but there was glass, there were ceiling tiles out. I could see that doors were broken. I don't even

know that the authorities up there had been notified. The owners of the businesses were aware of it. An electronics shop had been broken into, a drugstore next door had been burglarized, and that must have happened Saturday night, Sunday morning.

I had not heard any of the reports on the Grand Forks stations, of any looting like that, and I was real surprised. You know, being from this area, I thought, "Boy, that's the kind of thing--" Going up there, it didn't even cross my mind that we'd have that, but I just got up there and I saw this, and I thought, "That's the kind of thing we don't have in this part of the country. People are honest and they're not going to take advantage of the situation." So it was a bit troubling to see that, almost the first thing as I pulled into town, but there was evidence, certainly, of some burglary activity up there. Project TS: That brings up an interesting question, and goes back to something you said just a bit earlier. You said that right at the time the dikes gave way at Grand Forks, East Grand Forks, there was a strong feeling here that, "Yes, this is a crisis, but we're all going to work together and we're going to overcome it, and if we all pitch in, we get a lot of volunteers, we keep watching those dikes, manning those sandbags,History we're going to overcome it, and we're going to beat this." Oral I know that was a very strong feeling up in Grand Forks, EastSociety Grand Forks as well, and I think it relates to what you're saying here. The kind of people that we feel live here in the Valley, they're going to work together, they're1997 going to work hard, they're not going to give up. Is it particularly disheartening then when the dikes do give way, when you discover that under the stress and strain, ofsuddenly you discover somebody went out and looted a store? You said you were a pretty optimistic person. This has got to take you down a little bit. Historical

PJ: Yes, it did. I expected--IFloods didn't know what to expect, really, when I got up to Grand Forks, but I didn't expect to see that. As soon as I got to the National Guard checkpoint and got into a little media area that I had to kind of argue my way into, because I think that the National GuardRiver people had seen enough reporters by that time, I called KFGO, and went on the air to reportMinnesota that I was there. I hadn't seen much, but I had seen this, and it was odd that in the studio at that very time was Earl Strinden, who was the former Majority LeaderRed of the North Dakota State House, and Earl was in our studio because he had to evacuate his home in Grand Forks and he was on with Ed Schultz, along with anotherThe fellow from Grand Forks, whose name escapes me. I believe he was on the city council, and he was with Earl. They both had to evacuate their homes.

So I was essentially describing what I had seen to this point, and then brought up what I believed to be some looting, and Earl was very, very upset with that. He just was really kind of shocked that that had happened. In fact, I had called back after my initial report, just to give the newsroom some additional information on that--the names of the businesses, and what I had seen--and Earl got on the phone in the newsroom and really wanted to make sure I was sure as to what I saw. I said, "Well, Earl, this is what I saw." I

mean, you just don't see boarded-up plate-glass windows. There was no windstorm here.

TS: He got upset that you reported it?

PJ: No, no. No, he was not. He was upset that it had happened. He was upset because he, like I, was really surprised, especially at that early stage. I mean, we've seen some neighborhood looting since then in some of the flooded-out areas, as people start to rebuild their homes up in Grand Forks. But that early, as the crisis had just hit and the town was evacuated, to think that there were some people that were still there that were trying to take advantage of the situation, it was discouraging.

TS: Which brings up the point, as I said earlier, there was this strong beliefProject that enough effort, enough coordination, enough volunteers, and you can escape these events sometimes. Of course, this is an area of the country that named a town Cando [North Dakota]. Is it particularly hard for Americans who live in this kind of setting to deal with this kind of catastrophe when it does occur? History PJ: I think so, because it's so rare. I mean, we haven't had this. Oral TS: But we have had droughts. Society

PJ: We've had our share of crisis, you know,1997 but at least in my lifetime, I can't imagine, I can't recall anything this devastating, that affected so many people. Sure, you're going to have your isolated flooding. There were ofpeople that were flooded, not only in Grand Forks, but in rural areas of Cass and Clay County. Nobody predicted that flood. Nobody predicted this overland flooding. You couldn'tHistorical have guessed it. Yes, I think the flood event really kind of--it was like getting slugged in the stomach to a lot of people here, because even all the hard workFloods and the preparation that the communities went through, you just couldn't stop it everywhere, and I think that that kind of hurts people, I think, and is demoralizing. River TS: Over the years, as a radioMinnesota journalist, you've read about a lot of floods, you've delivered news about a lot of floods, not necessarily from here, but you've picked up from AP [AssociatedRed Press], from CBS, and other wire services. Even as we speak today, down in the Carolinas, as a result of this hurricane, they've had some major flash floods, ten, twelve,The sometimes twenty inches of rain drop in a short period of time. What was it about here that we didn't think this would happen here? It's a different kind of flood now. This is not a flash flood. When this river decides to flood its banks, it's slow but inexorable. You can sit and watch it coming for days.

PJ: And you know it's coming, and you think you can stop it. For the most part, at least in this part of the Red River Valley, we did. People say, "Well, could Grand Forks have done more? Was Grand Forks prepared? Did they start planning as early as Fargo- Moorhead? Who's to blame?" I don't think you can blame anybody. I don't think that you

can blame the Weather Service. I don't think you can blame the officials in Grand Forks. You just can't take fifty-four feet of water in Grand Forks. I don't care if they would have known that it was coming for two months; I don't think they could have stopped it. I just don't think they could have. That much water coming in out of the Red River, nobody could imagine it. You could still be building dikes to prevent damage from that, but I just don't think that you could have stopped it.

TS: What about recovery efforts for Grand Forks, East Grand Forks? I know KFGO did something regarding some of the radio stations and air time, something like that, for some of the stations up there. Is that correct?

PJ: I'm not quite exactly clear. During the event? Project

TS: During the flood, essentially you used your airwaves to put out their information.

PJ: Right, yes. They'd call us, and they had no other way to get their information out. As I said earlier, I think Mayville, Lisbon, Grafton, many of the GrandHistory Forks stations, are the ones that come to mind that were out. And we continued that, in many cases, for several days, in particular in the case of Mayville and GraftonOral and Lisbon, where their stations weren't just out for the weekend. They were out into the nextSociety week. The residents had no local information source. We had their managers and their news guy and their station calling us and saying, "Hi, this is Dan from KMAV.1997 I would like to go on the air." Well, we said, "Go right ahead." I mean, that's our job, and I think that--well, I know that if we were off the air, and, by golly, we were closeof a couple times, you know, those stations would have done all they can to help us as well. Broadcasters kind of came together, at least up and down the valley. Maybe not locally,Historical the direct competitors. I don't think there was a lot of newfound cooperation between especially the television stations; they pretty much did their own thing. ButFloods for radio, up and down the valley, I think we helped each other out quite a bit during the whole flood.

TS: What about relationshipsRiver between the local news and national news, when, as a result of what happened in GrandMinnesota Forks and East Grand Forks, they brought in CBS, NBC, correspondents from all over the nation? Red PJ: Well, it's interesting. You know, that doesn't happen that often here. High-profile cases,The disasters, you'll start to get the networks to come into this area, and I've dealt with them over the years, in various situations. I think, for the most part, in the coverage that I saw, they did a pretty good job. I was pretty impressed with some of the network coverage that I saw. In the Twin Cities media, television stations in particular. I don't get to see much of their coverage, but from reports of people in Moorhead--in fact, those that have one of the Minneapolis cable channels, channels available on cable -- they did a pretty good job on a daily basis. I don't think there was much problem with this, sometimes there's a problem with the local beat reporters and the network guys. Sometimes the network people will try to come in and take control.

TS: Did that happen during this flood?

PJ: Not that I saw. No, not that I saw at all. Because of the disaster, I think there may have been some sort of a feeling of compassion by these outside reporters, not only for the residents here, but for the people that were trying to do the job here. Maybe we're not as experienced. We're not with a network, but we know the area. There were cases, in fact, the Minneapolis Tribune, as an example, were up here. Well, they were in our station. In fact, they were writing a story about us, but the story got lost in the shuffle because of the flood. They just couldn't write this sidebar story that they wanted about KFGO. I don't think they ever got it written. But for several days we were a resource for them, and they monitored our broadcast and about everywhere we'd go, they'dProject show up. We shared cell phone numbers of officials that we had, that we began to collect. We started to collect cell phone numbers back in January for this event, just started a list of official cell phone numbers, because we knew we'd probably need them. We hoped we didn't. But there was pretty good cooperation. I know that the networks, for an example, fed tape out of the local affiliates here. Prairie Public TelevisionHistory has real good television facilities, and the networks basically leased time to use their production facilities. So I'm not aware of any run-ins with local media and nationalOral media. There have been some disputes in the past, but this time it was pretty smooth. Society

TS: You had pretty good relationships with government,1997 too, it sounds like, as a result of this, but what about federal government agencies since that time, on the recovery efforts? FEMA. President [Bill] Clinton came upof to Grand Forks, East Grand Forks. Was there any problem with coordinating news coverage of those events? Historical PJ: No, actually-- Floods TS: The vice president [Albert Gore, Jr.] came down here, I believe.

PJ: Actually, they cutRiver a lot of the red tape for credentials and whatnot that we generally have to go through for a pre-Minnesotaarranged visit, especially a presidential or a vice presidential visit, that was waived. Usually we'll have to have a business card and a letterhead and be cleared. A lotRed of that was out the window. I mean, there were breaches in security, to allow coverage of the event. If you had a recorder in your hand, and you looked like you workedThe for a TV or radio station or newspaper, you were pretty much allowed in. That's kind of unusual, at least my experience, dealing with federal agencies, in particular.

I would like to say that--you mentioned FEMA and those type agencies. From a reporter's standpoint, I could not complain about any of the local, state, or federal agencies, as far as cooperation with our station. I can't speak for others. But FEMA, in particular, calling us, faxing us, trying to do whatever they could to facilitate our coverage efforts. I met one of the FEMA people when I got to Grand Forks, one of the first people I met up there, and she made sure that I had her phone number and her hotel number, and anything I needed.

It was very impressive from a media cooperation standpoint. Oftentimes, it seems, in my experience, it's difficult to get information and difficult to find a representative that'll speak to you. But they were very cooperative and they were prepared. It's obvious they've done this before in disaster situations, and I think it helps that some of them, at least, in my experience, are former journalists, and so they know what we want, they know what we need, and they just have a sense for what types of things, the different types of media, the different type of media--radio, television, newspaper--will want. So that helps a lot.

TS: There are a lot of local organizations, too, you've had to maintain contact with, particularly after the flood. You get to the recovery efforts. You've got local charities, lots of people offering home space for people even during the flood, after the flood, while their homes are being repaired or replaced or whatever. You've had to dealProject with an enormous number of private organizations, just plain private individuals, over the past few months. Is that still going on at KFGO?

PJ: Not as much as it was. It may seem cruel, but at one point, I don't know exactly when it was, we had to take a real look at our programming after theHistory major disaster had passed. How long do we keep doing this, almost nonstop flood updates? We evaluated it, and I can't give you a date or a time, but it seemed, while it Oralwas still on the front page and would continue to be for some time, we as an organization startedSociety to kind of get a little bit more selective about what flood-type stories we'd do, how much flood content we were going to allow on our talk shows. We got the1997 sense that people were really, at least in our primary listening area--Fargo-Moorhead--were really getting tired of it. They'd dealt with it for months, they'd prepared for it, they'dof cleaned up, and were still cleaning up, and we really had to take a long look at it. Historical So we, in an editorial sense, really started to pick and choose what we were doing, because we have to considerFloods that the majority of our audience at that point was no longer threatened, and they were no longer directly affected by it, and they were getting burned out on flood, flood, flood. And, you know, we're a business, and we live and die by the advertising dollar, dictatedRiver by our ratings. There can be a point, not only in a flood, but in any type programming situation,Minnesota where you can start to burn out the listener. So after April, we got through April, and into the first couple of weeks of May, we started to try, through a programmingRed sense and a news sense, to try to get back to some sort of normal schedule and normal programming. We're still talking about the flood, and we're still reportingThe on it, but certainly not to the degree that we did at the height of it.

TS: Obviously, during the flood, KFGO must have lost advertising revenue, because they weren't doing commercials.

PJ: Right. And then at night, when we stayed on our full-time power array--the daytime pattern--at night we're not allowed to play commercials, and so we lost that revenue. But as luck would have it, our station, particularly our AM, which I deal with primarily, there was a spinoff benefit from our coverage. We had advertisers that had never advertised

with us, calling us. In fact, May, June, and July, the commercial inventory, partially, because of our coverage, was sold out. You could not buy a commercial.

TS: Did you have advertisers whose advertising declined because they were flood victims, because of drops in business due to the flood? Anything like that?

PJ: Well, there were some retail merchants that certainly suffered. In fact, I know many of them personally, that are friends of mine, some West Acres merchants, you know, they had a horrible winter. The flood was just devastating for them, until the Grand Forks evacuees started to come, and then they started to recover some of their losses.

TS: Can you give me an example of one of those? Project

PJ: I can give you one. Green's [Footwear] for shoes in the West Acres mall. The owner is Steve Green. I talked to him several times, and his business had dropped off this winter, I believe he said 20 percent, which is pretty significant. Christmas was down. It was just the weather. People couldn't get out. They just put thingsHistory off. But then the flood came, and his business, his trade area, increased as the evacuees came in. Oral TS: And some of them are still here. Society

PJ: And some of them are still here, unfortunately.1997

TS: One thing I should ask you about is ofthe Internet. This flood has probably received more coverage on the Internet than probably any flood prior to this point. I've just been searching the Internet, and even during the flood,Historical the number of Internet pages were available, that were carrying photographs of the flood, hourly updates of river levels, all sorts of information. And then,Floods of course, the recovery efforts that have been coordinated and carried over the Internet. Has KFGO used these, contributed to these, done anything with these? River PJ: Well, I'm not directly Minnesotainvolved with our website, but I am involved in some of the input, and as we prepared for the flood, again, we didn't know the magnitude of the flood, never imaginedRed it would get like this, but we got in touch with the North Dakota State University Extension Service. Basically I was looking for some resources that we could haveThe available, some resource guides, that we could refer to perhaps on the air, different types of advice for sandbagging, as an example, or sanitizing contaminated property. We quickly became aware that all of this material, basically, was available on their website. Well, it was a simple task to add their web address to our website, so that's one that we put on, added for additional information, NDSU Extension service, and whatever their address was. So we utilized that, and so all their information was available through out web pages. And we also updated our web page daily with pertinent information that we had.

We have someone that comes in every morning, one of our show producers, Scott Sorum, who's responsible for our web entries on a daily basis, and that is local news highlights and that type of thing. So one of his first duties every day was to update our page. The problem was is that he couldn't update it during the day very often because he was given some other job, basically, to help out in the total effort, so it wasn't updated as much as we would like, but at least it was updated every twenty-four hours.

TS: Was this your experience, too, that the web pages just became increasingly important during the flood and as the recovery efforts began after the flood?

PJ: Well, I wish I could say I had time to experience it. Obviously, we have computers at work that are on the web, and I have one at home, and at no time during theProject flood did I personally touch either of them, and so I can't speak to that. But I know there was a lot of information out there. I didn't see the page, but I know that Channel 11, Channel 4, and Forum Publishing has their web pages and I know, from word of mouth, that they provided some very useful information on a daily basis, too. So there were certainly a lot of sources available. History

TS: What about the flip side? This is where you get information.Oral What about information you supply to others? Are you still getting requests from nationalSociety wire services or others, for updates on, like, recovery in Grand Forks, or recovery in the Valley? As debate develops over fighting floods in the future, are1997 we going to build our dikes higher, up in Grand Forks, East Grand Forks, are they going to build their dikes higher or are they going to move back further, are they goingof to advocate a retreat from the flood plain, are they going to create a diversion project -- are requests coming in anymore from outside the valley for this kind of information? Historical

PJ: No, they aren't. As far asFloods a national story, it's over, I think. Perhaps the rebuilding of Grand Forks, that could become a national story for a day, and the TV station will come in with the networks. But our network is on to bigger and better things. CBS called us, I don't know how often,River in the month of April. Hundreds of times. We had developed a pretty good rapport with them.Minnesota Being a smaller station, but a pretty good news station, nationally, they know us, but we had never talked to them this much, ever, and we don't want to talkRed to them that much again at all. But, no, I have not had any requests from them since then. The We're a UPI subscriber, the only one in the market. We're also Associated Press. What's kind of happened is that the facilities, their contributors--radio stations, newspapers--now, on the flooded areas, Grand Forks Herald for one, they're back, so that material can be gleaned from that publication, from the Grand Forks Herald, from Associated Press member stations in Grand Forks, so now they're there again. So they're there, the wire can call them, or they can get it off the Grand Forks Herald. As the Grand Forks Herald morning edition comes out, it goes to the AP wire service, before it hits the streets. So they're back in and they're kind of covering it.

The wires and the networks usually have access to state wires. They can peruse those wires. If there's something that piques their interest, they might give somebody a call, but now, like I say, they're on to different stories. This was a big story but nationally it's not anymore.

TS: What about the emotional cost of this kind of thing, from the point of view of a radio station? You've got your people in so long during a six-week period, really, in which all this is going on. Floods, recovery, debates over water management, everybody's high stress. And there's a letdown; it all ends. Now, there's a lot of recovery that needs to be done. There's going to be coordinating information about Red Cross coming in, local events. There was a Rally in the Valley. I assume you folks covered that whenProject that occurred. Did you go out and broadcast live during that, for example?

PJ: Yes. We were one of the sponsors of the Rally of the Valley. I didn't cover it, but our stations did. I think four of our six stations were live there, and sponsored the event as a recovery, trying to get people to think about something else. ItHistory was originally scheduled for, I think, April 28th, and as it turned out, we had to reschedule that because we were still in the middle of a flood, or at least the northern valleyOral was. Society TS: That wouldn't have looked very good for us to have a major party down here. 1997 PJ: No, it wouldn't have. Some of the participants, many of them were from the Grand Forks area, I think the ones that could getof away, that had either lost their homes or had saved their homes. I think a lot of people did come down from that area, because I talked to many of them that said they were from GrandHistorical Forks. "I know you from KFGO, and we listen to you," starting on the first week in April. And we had the mayors of both those cities that took the time to comeFloods down here. Because I think it was a Grand Forks, East Grand Forks, Fargo-Moorhead, but I think that possibly we've kind of forged, I don't know, a bridge, if you will, between the two communities now. I think that there's going to be a lot more understandingRiver of one another. I think people are going to have more of a compassion for Grand ForksMinnesota now. I think we're closer to Grand Forks than we were. I think we are. As a Fargo resident. I feel closer to Grand Forks, because I've seen what they've goneRed through, firsthand, and also in the media, as just a consumer.

TS: TheSo if Fargo builds its dikes higher, which sends more water faster towards Grand Forks, what's that going to do to the town's feelings?

PJ: That friendship would quickly end. Yes, I think so.

TS: It's hard to say. Well, back to this emotional question. Some of you folks--you, obviously, from what you've told me, were living on adrenaline for a good deal of time.

PJ: Coffee and adrenaline, yep.

TS: What happens now? In the three, four, five weeks that follow this kind of high-stress, high-activity thing?

PJ: Well, we each took one day off, other than some weekends off. But, you know, we've got to carry on. We've got news events to cover, and it's somewhat back to normal, but we're not going to get back the time we put in, and nobody expects to. That's the nature of this business.

TS: Did the station pay a lot of overtime for this?

PJ: No, because most of the people are salaried people, so very little overtime.Project We did utilize two Moorhead State and two NDSU interns that helped -- basically, they were runners. They had been contacted about interning for the flood, but we and they never thought that they'd be in the middle of basically what was a war zone in our radio station. At times it appeared to be. As I did say earlier, though, I was concerned about the coordination of volunteers, and that was handled by the VolunteerHistory Center, a United way agency. But I was also concerned about basics, because my experience in past floods like this, was there was no clearinghouse for information, Oralfor simple questions. What's the river level, if you missed it on the radio? Who do I call for sandbags?Society What's the city of Fargo's engineering number? Those kind of calls, KFGO had gotten in previous floods, and so I proposed, and we adopted, what we 1997called the "KFGO flood line," and it was basically an informational line that we started up. of I guess it was operational--I think we kicked it off ahead of schedule on that weekend, the first weekend in April. It was ready to go. ItHistorical was hooked up, but we hadn't promoted it, and all of a sudden it was on, and we had to staff that, and the interns helped with that. We had reams and reams of Floodsinformation, a lot of referrals. You know, “who do I call?” We figured, going in, oh, we'll get a couple hundred calls on this thing. We estimated, and it's very difficult. We tried to log the calls, but sometimes the phone would just ring constantly. We estimatedRiver we had between 3,500 and 4,500 calls. Minnesota TS: Do you remember the names of the interns? Red PJ: One of them I hired, Judy Fossum, is a Moorhead State grad. We have another one that Thewe hired in our office as a result of this, and she's a North Dakota State University student, I believe, and her name is Heidi.

TS: That's okay. Maybe we can get it later.

PJ: Yes. I had an April, I believe, who was from North Dakota State University. And we also had a couple of people that had no association with KFGO, one lady in particular, well, two ladies. One lady I know, one lady I don't. That knew, just by listening to the station, that it was a madhouse, and came in off the street, didn't know them, and offered

32 to do something. One of the ladies' name was Debbie Villella, from Fargo. She came in one night, over a weekend, and just helped answer phone calls. We had another lady that came in on several occasions to do the flood line. Had no radio experience. Had answered a phone in an office at one time in her career. Her children were not living at home, they had grown, and thought we might need some help. So that was surprising, to see people come off the street and help us, certainly much appreciated, because we could use the help.

TS: Were there people at the station who were flooded out? You mentioned in that first weekend, you had someone in Kragness and someone else?

PJ: Yes, in Millport. Project

TS: Yes. Who were threatened by the waters and everything. But as the flood developed, were there people in south Fargo, people at your station, whose homes were damaged or lost by the flood? History PJ: No. It was only those two, and that was early. While that weekend was a crisis for them, their damages have been repaired. It was essentiallyOral basement flooding, but in that storm, they didn't know what they were going to get, and it wasSociety a hellacious weekend for them. But now they're back together. But beyond that, no. 1997 There was one point that there was concern for our AM transmitter, which is located on Highway 81 south, and the Wild Rice Riverof was over the road and there was a concern that our transmitter could get flooded. We had Tim Bertschi of the Army Corps of Engineers down there one night, surveying andHistorical giving us some advice. We were very close, very close, to having contractors come in and dike our AM transmitter site, but we were assured by the Corps andFloods other experts that they didn't think the water would threaten our towers, and fortunately, it didn't. But that was another one of the other situations that we dealt with that people really didn't know. If I can, I think the most frightening part of this,River for me, and I don't know the date, but it was the night that the Fox Run and Timberline divisionsMinnesota in south Fargo were threatened.

We knew weRed were threatened by overland flooding, but I had gotten home about ten o'clock, had some supper, knew I was going to get up early. My phone rang at midnight and Theit was Don Haney, one of my reporters, and he was at home, frantic. He said the station just called him. "Walaker (that being Dennis Walaker), Furness, Zavoral, and Bittner have just walked in the station, and they want to go on the air."

I said, "Well, what do they want to go on the air for?" Because Fargo had been feeling pretty good. I had been at a city meeting four or five hours, a city staff meeting, and it was kind of a status report and everything looked pretty good. I said, "What do they want to go on the air for?"

He said, "I don't know. I don't know what's going on."

Obviously I felt there was a crisis here, so I turned on the radio, and it wasn't too many minutes later that a nervous Mayor Bruce Furness was on the air, saying that a precautionary evacuation was underway for those two subdivisions, and gave the indication that all of south Fargo was in real danger, and I knew I was among them, as a homeowner, but I also knew that I had to go out to work. I mean, it was the middle of the night, and there wasn't much I could do. But my responsibility--my house was okay at the moment, and I thought I had a responsibility to be out there and tell people what was going on. But that was a really scary moment, I think, for me personally and as a newsman, because I thought, "We're going to lose Fargo." Project I don't know if he'd admit it, but the city engineer, Mark Bittner, his sister is an acquaintance of someone that I know, and that night he called his sister, and he's a pretty calm, cool guy, but he called his sister about that time, and said, "Get everything out of your lower level. We could lose this city tonight." And that has not been reported, but he told his sister that. That's how close we were. These guys cameHistory into the station, wanted to go on the air, but they didn't know what they were going to say. They commandeered a typewriter and started typing what they were going toOral say, among the four of them. You know, “what should we say, how should we say it.” They justSociety knew they had to get on the air somewhere, and it was chilling. 1997 TS: A lot of people were under a lot of strain. At any point did KFGO get a psychologist or something on the air, to talk about anyof of this?

PJ: I believe we had--I know on a Sunday morning,Historical Boyd had some clergy on, just for some spiritual uplifting, and that must have been about the weekend of the 14th, 15th. It was the middle of the month.Floods

TS: About the time everything went to heck in Grand Forks. River PJ: Yes. I think it may haveMinnesota been the Sunday morning after the Grand Forks fire, and he had a Catholic priest and he had a Lutheran minister on for a while. It wasn't a sermon, but it was justRed some spiritual talk and what people can do from that sense. I think that was helpful. I do know that following the flood, that we've had mental health experts on, locally,The on our Jack and Sandy Show. I know they have a lot of doctors on. So, yes, and we did some of that in our newscast, too, just some general tips and that type of stuff.

TS: Can you think of any other news story you've covered that has been comparable to the flood?

PJ: Nothing close.

TS: Nothing close?

PJ: No. You know, Gordon Kahl. I mean, that's not a disaster, but that was a big story, and it was just after I started at KFGO. In fact, it was the first criminal trial that I'd covered as a reporter, and that was quite an assignment, because it was a national story. I spent a couple of days in Jordan, Montana, at the Freeman camp a year or so ago. That was kind of an interesting assignment, but, no, there's nothing that rivals the flood.

TS: What would you say if I told you this, that as part of this project, I interviewed a Moorhead city engineer who told me that with the amount of rain we've had in the last month, and the amount of saturation in the ground that we have, anything comparable to the type of snow we had last fall will produce a flood worse than this? Project PJ: I'd believe it. I'd believe it.

TS: And so are you making plans for the possibility of covering something even bigger?

PJ: I'll tell you, if we have a winter that is similar, as far as severity,History to last winter, seriously--I mean, I love this area, my roots are in this area, I've got a lake cabin in this area, my kids love the area, but I would seriously considerOral moving. It's a real killer. And in my business, which is high stress anyway, I don't know ifSociety I could take another winter and spring like that, and I don't think I will. I really don't. 1997 TS: Well, we've covered a lot of ground here. Can you think of anything more you'd like to add? of

PJ: No, I think that we've pretty well coveredHistorical it. I've got nothing else that I can throw out, unless there's something you think we missed. Floods TS: No, I think we've covered a lot of ground. We've got a very good interview. Thanks for doing it. River PJ: Sure, you bet. Minnesota Red

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