Forget the water, visitors welcome

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/03/2009 (6349 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

MANITOBANS who planned to visit Grand Forks or Fargo during school break next week should still come down — come heck or high water, the two flood-threatened North Dakota cities said Tuesday.

"We understand that the anxiety level comes up," but visitors will neither be walking into a disaster, nor getting in the way, said Kevin Dean, public information officer for the City of Grand Forks. "We know it’s a lot of water.

"We’re hoping visitors will continue to come," Dean said. "Absolutely — this is not a situation like ’97 where we saw businesses closing and people being let off work to sandbag… Not even a shadow of what we saw in 1997."

Dean said that while visitors might have to take some detours to reach Grand Forks, all businesses plan to remain open with regular staff.

"I don’t want to say it’s a non-event," Dean said, but within the city, new flood protection built since 1997 should keep the city safe. The Red River will crest in Grand Forks from Monday through April 4, he said.

"The numbers they’re talking about are well within the protection."

One problem, Dean conceded, is that bridges to East Grand Forks could be closed, cutting off access to Minnesota.

Fargo-Moorhead Visitors and Convention Bureau marketing director Brian Matson was not quite as confident that Fargo’s downtown business district would be unaffected, but still encouraged visitors to come.

"Fargo’s not underwater," Matson said. "You watch the mainstream media, they make it look like everything is shut down.

"I’m not hearing a whole ton of cancellations — people aren’t pulling out and heading for the hills."

"We’re kind of playing it by ear" to see what happens when the Red crests at the end of the week, he said. West Acres Mall is far from the river and should not be affected, he said.

Manitoba visitors will definitely not get in the way of dealing with the flood, he said: "I don’t see how we could ever see tourists as a burden."

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca

Nick Martin

Former Free Press reporter Nick Martin, who wrote the monthly suspense column in the books section and was prolific in his standalone reviews of mystery/thriller novels, died Oct. 15 at age 77 while on holiday in Edinburgh, Scotland.