Roseau County Historical Society and Museum -

As you all are aware of, on Tuesday, June 11 the city of Roseau underwent a disastrous flood. Before the next two days had passed over seventy-five percent of the residential and all of the downtown area as well as the south frontage road on Highway 11 West was affected. The massive battle to save Polaris Industries, the lifeblood of Roseau and many county residents, turned out to be successful. And now the effort of cleanup is well under way.

It is time to update you on what transpired in the county museum. On Tuesday, staff person, Toni Donarski and I arrived at work to find that two other staff personnel would not able to make it to work due to the bridges being under water or flooded roads in their area. I had been in on Monday and had done some work and with the dike being so successful in 1996 felt fairly secure. At that time I didn’t realize how much rain had been received in the southern area of the county. Adding to the feeling of security was a temporary clay/sand dike the city had installed along our area of the river behind the museum.
After arriving on Tuesday and checking the dike and river level a feeling of uneasiness settled in, but the sandbaggers were busy. About 10 am Polaris sent a van over, and then about 10 people arrived to help us. After assessing the situation and not realizing I would get this help so immediately I put them to work moving all items in the research center up 24 inches. This included all bound newspapers, atlases, and anything that could be damaged. 2 of these wonderful people were men, who went through the museum and placed the heavy items into the exhibits. The John A. Rein folk art altar painting (circa 1890) had been placed in a new case made by Bob Bergland in May. This made it easier to place it up in a safe place. I could feel the tension in these fine people who came in and knew they were concerned about the sandbagging and so told them to go sandbag and I would call when we needed them.
Toni and I then went to work. We moved the computer equipment up onto the desks and disconnected all electrical cords and phone cords in the office and museum. We moved the two bottom drawers of all file cabinets to the top of the cabinet or onto tables, transferred file cabinets on wheels to the city auditorium, including all microfilm census records, museum operations papers, accession books and RCHS board of director minutes. We walked the museum checking and moving more items higher. The museum building was build up to a higher elevation than the area around it so we felt we would not be more than about 12 inches in the museum, if that much, and the exhibits were off the floor more than that. It was an extremely anxious moment when the dike broke on the east side of town and we moved into the back room and started putting photographs and artwork on the bottom shelves up.
After the flood the days have just flowed one into another, what day it was didn’t matter. Aliza Olson, Sheila Winstead, Bruce Olson and I made our first venture into the museum on Friday. Much to our surprise, although there may have been about 8-12 inches water in the museum, things looked very good. The smell was something else and we knew the carpet had to come out as quickly as possible to protect the collection from mold and fungus.
Early the next morning I stopped in the city office and inquired if a National Guard contingency could help us remove the carpet. They willing sent us 4 people. Having never removed a carpet in my life I had no idea of how it should be removed, we have 6,000 square feet within the museum. Well that was solved immediately as one of the guardsmen stepped forward to offer that he was a carpet layer! They set to work and we all learned it came out in sections cut by a utility knife. They were able to help us for about 3 hours and then were called out. So now the carpet removal was at a stand still again.
I went home exhausted and a little discouraged on Saturday night. On Sunday a group of about 20 members of the Warroad Branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were in the museum removing the carpet. Apparently the LDS church in Salt Lake City had called the city to ask what their church could do and were told the library/museum needed volunteers. The Warroad Branch was giving the information and cancelled church services and spent about 4 to 5 hours removing all the carpeting, lifting the exhibits off the floor for air flow and cleaned shelves and file cabinets. From then on the other items could be checked for damage and taken care of in the proper way. We will pull no punches here; yes we did have some damage to artifacts but thankfully the collection but it was not substantial.
At this point BMS Cat is drying out the building. We look forward to the day when we can open. Many volunteers will be needed to help get to that point, but the history is preserved and soon the research center will open. All of the research center materials have been saved and for this we are grateful.
All contributions for the Roseau County Historical Society will be gratefully accepted as there are going to be many items that will need to be replaced, such as bookcases, fire file cabinets, our wardrobe closets.
We will never be able to personally thank all those how have already given so generously of their time and energy in the recovery efforts. You are all appreciated.

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