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No one has been able to accurately estimate the loss of personal property from the flood. Homeowners' insurance, for example, seldom covered all that a person might lose in a bank's flooded safe deposit vault. Nor could money extinguish the anguish of losing mementos, photographs, or other items that could not be replaced.
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Photograph courtesy of FEMA.
Beware of Buying a Flooded Car
The spring floods that hit not only Minnesota, but many midwestern states, makes it likely some flood-damaged vehicles will end up being offered for sale in Minnesota. Minnesota law regulates the sale of flood-damaged vehicles. If a late model vehicle (currently the 1992 model year and newer) has suffered damage exceeding 70 percent of its actual value, the seller is required to disclose the damage to the buyer on the vehicle's certificate of title at the time of sale. How can you tell if a car has been damaged by water? Often electrical problems don't surface immediately. Instead, they lie dormant for a year or more until corrosion eats away at the affected parts and cause them to fail. Following are some tips to help you determine if a car has been flood-damaged.
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This FEMA warning concerning flooded vehicles was published in
FEMA Recovery Times, June 3, 1997.
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Photograph courtesy of FEMA.
| Dear FNBND Customer, We are pleased that so many of you have come by to review the contents of your safe deposit boxes. We are also please that many of you have found the contents of the boxes to still be intact. For those of you who have not yet reviewed the contents of your box, we ask that you do so before June 14, 1997. All safe deposit boxes that were located at our downtown facility are now at 2401 DeMers Avenue (the D & H Building) in Grand Forks. Please call (701) 775-8395 and schedule an appointment to view the contents of your box. We are scheduling appointments between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday. If items in your box were damaged by water, continued delay may make the damage worse. When you come in to open your box, we will provide an inventory sheet. Please ensure you complete the inventory sheet to make it easier for you to submit claims to your insurer. We will also have cameras available to document any damage for your insurer. If you find damaged items and, after submitting the claims to your homeowners' insurance, you still have amounts not covered, please let us know. There may be insurance available through the bank that would cover some of this unreimbursed damage. Please contact us before September 1, 1997, with any unreimbursed claims. We thank you for your understanding. By working together, we can build a better community from this tragedy. Sincerely, Randy Newman |
First National Bank North Dakota contacted customers concerning the contents of safe deposit boxes at their downtown Grand Forks building. Although some customers had personal property insurance, many lost irreplaceable items. Letter courtesy of First National Bank North Dakota.
"I have a good friend, she's just staying in bed all day long. I call her at ten o'clock, and I say, 'Hey, get up, get doing, do something.' [She'll say] 'Well, I want my life back the way it was.' Well, it's not going to be the way it was; [she should] just make a new one. The way the flood has changed me as a person, I would say, is that I put a lot less value on personal belongings and possessions. It isn't that I think they're just totally unnecessary, but they sure have lost their meaning. When someone just hauls everything you own, practically, out to the berm, and you look at it - in fact, when I look back at pictures now, and I see other little things I forgot even were taken out there, it's all gone. It's been hauled away. You just kind of realize that, I guess, you can live without that." Mary Ann Dunlevy, former resident of East Grand Forks, |
