A Flood of Questions

Certainly you've heard about the Red River along the North Dakota-Minnesota border threatening to inundate Fargo, Moorhead and points south with crests surpassing the levels set in 1997. It's been the dominant news story around here for a week, and will be for a while longer. We're not experts on flood control, having never been in that situation ourselves. But we do have a few questions.

• Why do officials usually get it wrong on how high the river will be before bigger barriers are needed?
• Why do people choose to live by the river, knowing full well they might get flooded out once a decade? We might ask the same of those who choose to live in hurricane-prone coastal areas, or next to a volcano.
• Why do authority figures feel it necessary to behave like jerks in times of crisis? Is it because they think it makes them look like leaders?
• Why do we see long lines of people passing around heavy bags of dirt in freezing weather? Is the economy that bad?
• Why are there mandatory evacuation orders in North Dakota, but not in Minnesota?
• Why is Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty working so hard to free up money for the Red River Valley at the same time he's starving his own government?
• When news of the crisis began, Twin Cities TV stations referred to Fargo-based reporters as coming from their "sister stations". What does that mean, and would it kill them to mention who that "sister station" is?
• Did network correspondents fly to the Twin Cities, then take buses (or some other form of transportation) to Fargo? Do they even know where it is?
• Once they are there, why do some of those correspondents feel compelled to do stupid things such as standing waist-deep in the frozen river (as one CBS reporter did), or get arrested for standing where they shouldn't be standing (as one CNN reporter allegedly did)? Is it for the same reason why they hang onto lampposts during hurricanes?
• Has anyone bothered to go up to Grand Forks to see how things are since the city was almost destroyed in the '97 flood?
• The University of North Dakota's hockey team gave up the tying goal to the University of New Hampshire with .01 seconds remaining in an NCAA playoff game, then lost it in overtime. How much more bad news can North Dakota take?
• How long will it be before certain organizations try to separate us from our money in these Difficult Economic Times, under the pretense of helping out the poor folks who were flooded out of their homes? We don't need another AIG.

Hey, we're just asking questions. Any answers?