"'We Got Our Butt Kicked' By Flooding, And Are Adapting"

"MINOT, N.D. — Donna Bye's tour of the city she loves takes you by her old home, the red one on the left that, in 2011, flooded with 5 feet of Souris River water and backed-up sewage.

In the months after that, Bye's husband and father-in-law cleaned out the home and rebuilt it. And then, uncertain whether it would be eligible for a buyout and unwilling to live in limbo for perhaps a decade or more, she and her husband reluctantly decided to sell. A landscape architect by training, Bye loved living near the wooded river bottom for the oaks and ashes and gardening potential, loved how she knew her neighbors, loved how it was the place she brought her babies home to after they were born.

'It was very painful to put that 'for sale' sign up in front of our house,' she said. 'But yet, somewhere down the line, that was me being resilient before I knew what it meant. In order for me to make a long-term investment in the next 10 years of my career, I needed to not be worrying about, and I needed to not be fighting that looming purchase or buyout that eventually I knew would come.'"

Erika Bolstad reports for ClimateWire September 15, 2016, as part of the "Heating Up In The Heartland" series.

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