Another Flood-Area Leak: Security

They told Henry Howe to get out of town. It was no use.

“I’ve got a home and business, and I’ve got to get in here,” Howe said.

He is one of hundreds of people who have defied evacuation orders and skirted lax martial law to get at their properties since the Red River flooded this city of 50,000 people 10 days ago.

“I don’t know what else I’d do,” Howe said. “I’m really worried about my home.”

Some people are even living at home again, despite having no tap water or sewer service.

“Anybody that knows the city and has a brain right now can get in,” said Scott Carlson, a National Guardsman manning the only traffic checkpoint in town during the weekend.

During the night, police crisscross the city and helicopters circle desolate neighborhoods, using high-tech infrared and night-vision scopes to look for looters.

By day, homeowners bustle about, all of them in on the worst-kept secret in town: Security is loose.

Most of the authorities are locals, sympathetic to people’s need to get home.

“If they’re in their homes, we’re not going to bother them,” Carlson said.

Residents of drier sections of the city were allowed to visit their property Sunday for a fourth day, and residents of some parts of neighboring East Grand Forks, Minn., were allowed back for the first time.

But many others entered areas still officially closed.

“There’s no way they can keep people from coming over here,” said Barb Faulkenberry, inspecting her home behind security lines Saturday. “Since about every road is open, you don’t have the manpower to do that.”

Guardsmen and police who randomly patrol the neighborhoods are turning a blind eye to residents too anxious to keep away.

“I think it’s pretty easy to tell the good guys from the bad guys,” Faulkenberry said.

Water continued to recede Sunday, revealing more of the thick layer of mud covering the streets. Abandoned cars sat askew on sidewalks. Trash was everywhere.

“Everyone along here lost the sandbag battle,” said Jason Gierszewski as he slid through mud coating the basement of his grandfather’s home.

The throb of generators could be heard throughout the neighborhood.

Officials have said some areas are clearly unsafe, and they have even put off searching part of the downtown that was gutted by a mid-flood fire.

Meanwhile, the front edge of the flood crest on the northward-flowing Red River moved through the little farming communities of Pembina and St. Vincent, Minn., a few miles from the Canadian border. The Pembina River, which joins the Red at Pembina, also was surging, aggravated by water flowing in from the Red.

The two dozen residents of Leroy, N.D., about 25 miles west of Pembina, had to be evacuated.

Coast Guard planes flew across the sparsely settled area, their crews looking for the sheets that residents were told to wave if they were in trouble.