MPR’s Dan Kraker interviews residents in Duluth about their experiences during intense rainstorm and subsequent flooding.
The official Duluth total rainfall on June 19-20, 2012, was 7.25”, with Duluth International Airport breaking several rainfall records during this weather event. Locally high amounts in the 8–10-inch range were reported throughout Duluth neighborhoods and along the North Shore of Lake Superior. The steep terrain, and numerous creeks and rivers, played a significant role in the devastating damage and flooding that occurred in the Duluth community. The Fond Du Lac and West Spirit Mountain neighborhoods of Duluth and Thomson Township in Carlton County were evacuated, and a raging Kingsbury Creek flooded the Lake Superior Zoo, drowning over a dozen animals.
Transcripts
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DAN KRAKER: I'm standing behind the Whole Foods Co-op on the East Hillside in Duluth, about six blocks up from Lake Superior, where a huge retaining wall about 20 feet tall has been totally washed out. There's a gaping hole about 25 feet wide, where a creek that normally runs underneath the parking lot here has totally washed out that wall. It's a running, muddy torrent of chocolaty fuming water. It's an amazing sight.
JIM BENNING: This weather event definitely wreaked havoc on the city of Duluth.
DAN KRAKER: Duluth's public works utilities director Jim Benning, calmly scrutinized the devastating scene yesterday morning. He says the city's storm sewer system just wasn't designed to capture the amount of rainfall that fell in such a short amount of time.
SPEAKER 2: Any rain event of this size, it can overwhelm even a brand new system. And you could see that was a brand new retaining wall, and that failed.
DAN KRAKER: When the wall broke late last night, the Creek roared downhill toward a small brick apartment building. University of Minnesota Duluth senior Nicole Corr was in her basement apartment. She had just mopped up a little water that leaked in.
NICOLE CORR: Everything went back to normal, and, all of a sudden, I heard a gushing noise, and I go and look in my living room in that window right there. Water started gushing through the window because the current was up to here.
DAN KRAKER: The water reached up to her chest. She threw her cat and cell phone in a bag, stepped outside, and found herself blocked by a rushing stream of water. Her neighbor's boyfriend was there too.
NICOLE CORR: I just remember yelling because I was like, I can't do this. And he just grabbed me, and I remember just feeling him push me in, like the strength, like his adrenaline just must have been out of control.
DAN KRAKER: Now Corr's back at her apartment to assess the damage. Inside the battered door, they broke open to escape a foot of mud and gravel covers the floor. Wearing garbage bags around her feet, Nicole Corr and her friend Haley Mady sort through the wreckage.
HALEY MADY: Computer, yoga mat, fine.
NICOLE CORR: I don't know if I'm like in shock or like what, but I I'm just happy it's not all completely destroyed, because I thought I was going to lose everything.
DAN KRAKER: Across Duluth, the surging waters flooded homes and businesses. They tore up streets, leaving slabs of asphalt strewn about and blew manhole covers into the air. They also created gaping sinkholes in several streets, where broken underground pipes sucked gravel and asphalt down into the ground.
NAOMI JAEGER: Rebecca, be careful there.
DAN KRAKER: Naomi Jaeger calls to a neighbor as she stands near the edge of a sinkhole, which is easily 20 feet across and 10 feet deep. A car sits at the bottom. Yeager says she took the three passengers into her house last night, when their car suddenly sank 4 feet into the ground.
NAOMI JAEGER: They were literally driving and just went into a sinkhole. So that just shows you that could happen to anybody. People that are driving around today, it's just really stupid. Do you think that these people wanted this to happen to them?
DAN KRAKER: Authorities have been urging people to stay off the streets. They say roads may still be unstable after the rain subsides. Elsewhere, about 100 people were evacuated in the town of Thompson. Over 200 were evacuated from the Fond Du Lac area in far West Duluth.
Rob Skutvik is pastor of the Fond Du Lac Community Church. There his family left with the water lapping up his front steps and the churches next door.
ROB: And, of course, you think about how is that going to affect the next few weeks for services. But it'll work itself out. So the church is not about a building anyways. It's the people.
DAN KRAKER: That's also the message Duluth mayor Don Ness stressed, for Duluthians to come together and pitch in to help clean up a city that's been devastated by the worst flooding in recent history. Dan Kraker, Minnesota Public Radio news, Duluth.