How Businesses Recover From Disaster: Raging Red Produces Flood of Knowledge
By Jan Orvik
University of North Dakota
Office of University Relations

From disaster comes knowledge. As one of the nation's top 10 disasters of the last decade, the flood of 1997 which ravaged Grand Forks and much of the Red River Valley offered lessons for other communities which might experience similar disasters. But this could happen only if information were gathered quickly, while damages and memories were still fresh.

After the flood, Dr. Cliff Staples, professor of sociology at the University of North Dakota, put a previously planned project on hold and initiated an audit of businesses and their ability to recover from the catastrophe. At the request of North Dakota Job Service, Staples joined the Mayor's Committee on Business Redevelopment, working with the Chamber of Commerce, the UND College of Business and Public Administration, and the Small Business Development Center.

"We did a census of all businesses and non-profit organizations in Grand Forks immediately following the flood," he said. Part of the funding came from the Faculty in Technology Transfer Program through EPSCoR (North Dakota Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research). "If it weren't for that grant, we couldn't have done these other projects," he says.

Using additional funds from the U.S. Department of Labor, Staples looked at whether businesses were able to recover after the disaster, as well as factors that influenced their ability to regroup. He and his team conducted 1,400 interviews, assisted companies through referral, and developed a baseline for tracking the recovery effort. He found that businesses which were well-established before the flood tended to do better than fledgling operations, some of which went out of business. One of his findings drove home an important point to Red River Valley decision-makers: the issue of child care for workers not only hampered flood recovery, but was critical to the long-term economic development of North Dakota, which has an acute labor shortage. He also found that businesses run by women had more difficulty recovering from the flood, often due to child care issues.

The finding led to a three-year, $120,000 grant from the Bremer Foundation for a follow-up study of childcare arrangements and problems in the Grand Cities. The most unexpected finding from the study was that 76 percent of parents favored a system of publicly funded early childhood education similar to the school system. That's a surprising statistic, said Staples, "until you realize how much time, energy, and worry parents put into finding day care."

In the Grand Forks area, he found that more than 28 percent of households have at least one child age 12 or under, and that more parents of young families work than is the case nationwide. Nearly half of parents said childcare problems had created problems for them at work.

"The major problem with child care is that the system is a patchwork quilt," said Staples, adding that parents often can't find or afford the quality of day care they'd prefer. Compounding the problem, many of the day care providers went out of business after the flood.

The results from that study will be used in discussion with North Dakota legislators in the upcoming session.

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