While the City of Crookston was able to contain the flooding of the Red Lake River to a certain extent, not everyone was as fortunate to get by without damage. Tim and John Menard saw the basement of their residence at 518 Riverside Avenue completely fill with water from the Red Lake River by the time Sunday morning rolled around.
Plenty of friends and family helped the cause to stop and prevent the water the best they could, but the City of Crookston did not as they do not sandbag for private residences. “I called Brandon (Carlson) and he said he would check and see if there was anything they could do, and after talking with Fire Chief Tim Froeber, they said the city doesn’t sandbag private property and that we were on our own,” said Tim Menard. “At that point I sort of just shut down, because I didn’t know how to sandbag, and my brother John is disabled and he can’t sandbag, so it was this feeling of hopelessness.”
By 6:00 a.m. on Sunday morning, the sun porch in the basement was full of water from the Red Lake River. Tim’s sister-in-law Sheila Menard stopped by and together they bought bags of soil to try and soak the water and slow down the process of the house filling up. Unfortunately, the effort according to Tim was a day late and a dollar short due to how fast the water came up.
While a lot of damage did occur, thankfully not everything was a total loss thanks to the help of those friends and family members. “Kristie Jerde was able to get some people on the phone and thankfully we were able to salvage some of the antiques my mom had from down in the basement,” said Tim Menard. “We had about a half a dozen people here and anything we wanted to salvage we were able to get up on the beds upstairs, but everyone else was lost. What you see on the curb outside our house is everything we couldn’t save.”
Thankfully, The water never reached above the basement and throughout the process, both Tim and John were able to stay in the residence. However, it was far from an ideal circumstance. “When my mom and dad built this house, they designed it so that they could be self-sufficient on one floor,” said Tim Menard. “So, we stayed here throughout, and we have everything we need upstairs to continue staying here. We didn’t have heat or hot water, so we’ve been boiling water, and we have some space heaters, basically, we’ve been camping.”
Again, Tim was sure to thank the community and everyone that did help them in the effort to limit the damage as much as possible, and everyone that has been helping the past couple of days after the damage occurred. “I also want to thank all of the friends at the University of Minnesota Crookston and the others in the community who reached out and helped,” said Tim Menard. “They gave us a helping hand to help us with the cleanup and it was a heroic effort on their part. I’m in my 70s and my brother John is approaching, so it was life-changing to have the support of the community through this.”
They are still waiting to see and hear what or if insurance will cover any of the damage that has occurred up to this point. “It sounds like flood insurance would not cover my home’s damage on the lower level because it’s considered a basement,” said Tim Menard. “I would argue with whoever wrote those rules because I have three bedrooms, a bathroom, a family room, and a porch down there that are all ruined.”
We will be checking back with Tim to see if insurance will help and how much it will cover. A video of Tim giving us a tour of his basement and the damage can be found down below.
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