THE CITY THAT WOULDN'T DROWN

By STEVE LOPEZ/GRAND FORKS

It is the phrase everyone in Grand Forks, North Dakota, eventually utters: You sure can't beat the quality of life here. Never mind that it's like Siberia for half the year and that the only rise in the land is the curve of the planet. Nature can be a witch, they would admit--even before the 500-year flood that submerged the town last week, forcing the evacuation of 50,000 people and sparking fires that destroyed half the historic business district. Still, you just can't beat it. And it took no more than a day or two of watching Grand Forks begin its long, painful recovery to understand what the locals meant.

The Grand Forks Yellow Pages list 143 churches and only three psychiatrists, and it would take all 146 of them to explain how a place with so much faith could lose a turn-of-the-century downtown to nearly biblical disaster while the Wal-Mart on the edge of town stayed high and dry. The Grand Forks Herald, its offices swamped by relentless Red River tides and then finished off by raging fire, moved to new quarters without skipping an edition and began publishing page-long lists of personal messages phoned in by townsfolk--messages such as "To Mary O'Leary from Vicky Misialek: If you need a place to stay, please call." Same thing on radio. A woman named Marci heard that elfin mayor Pat Owens, elected in a landslide last year after assisting four mayors over 32 years, had fled her house with only two sets of clothes. So Marci called KNOX-AM to offer more.

On Wednesday the mayor made her daily appearance on KCNN-FM's "relief radio," where owner Dave Norman wears a shirt that says, no water, no food, no power, no problem. Owens often recognizes the voices of callers before they identify themselves. "I looked toward your house the other day and remembered the good old days," she told someone named Vicky, "and I actually got tears in my eyes."

Roughly 4.5 million acres in North Dakota and Minnesota were under chocolate-colored lakes, and potato, sugar-beet and grain farmers feared losing the planting season. As the water receded in Grand Forks and people began returning home to inspect damage estimated to top $1 billion, the Red whooshed toward Canada, bringing armies of small-town locals scurrying onto levees to hold back the river with sandbags and plywood. Mostly, they lost. There was some discussion of whether any of this could have been minimized. Some blamed the National Weather Service for underestimating the river after the melting of a record snowfall, but others said better information wouldn't have saved towns anyway. Phil Cogan, a spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Administration, stood on the banks of a new Grand Forks lake and shared the one truth taught him by countless disasters: "Mother Nature will find a way over, under or around anything you put in its path."

This raises the question of whether to rebuild in the low-lying downtown, and Pat Owens says there won't be an answer for weeks. Kim Holmes, who lost two restaurants, says he wants to. But even though he was one of only 1,000 or so with flood insurance, his losses are crippling. "I've got 3 ft. of water inside, with chairs and tables floating around the room."

Despite President Clinton's pledge last week that the government would pick up 100% of the immediate emergency disaster costs, not the customary 75%, other Grand Forks residents may not be able to rebuild their homes and businesses for years, and thousands could be out of work indefinitely. On the northern edge of town, Harris Peterson, 71, says his grain-processing plant depends on farmers' shipping him product, so it could be a rough year. "But it's the people downtown who are ruined." He adds, parenthetically, that his $250,000 downtown house was destroyed. No flood insurance. His eyes fill as he stands erect and says, "We'll get through this. I'm full-blooded Norwegian."

Whether it is denial, lingering shock or stout prairie faith, such optimism was as relentless as the river, even after a week without running water or plumbing. Residents would call a radio station, ask about a certain block of a specific street and learn that their house was under 8 ft. of water. "Well, alrighty then. Thank you very much."

"It's the way we are," said Owens, who has been working on two hours of sleep a night. "We got out with our lives, and the rest of it we can rebuild if we keep helping each other like we have been." Her 92-year-old father, Willard Guerard, had to be rescued by helicopter from his farm near East Grand Forks. Asked where his daughter, who has gone from virtual anonymity to daily appearances on national television, got her wits and her will, he said, "From me." As a girl, he added, Pat farmed potatoes with her dad, and feeling the earth in your hands prepares you for anything. "The quality of life here is real good," he explained.