Student Leaves Car, Takes Train Home

Rachelle Gottbreht gave up on Grand Forks.

The 20-year-old college sophomore turned her back on the flooded North Dakota city earlier this week and came home to Spokane.

She left behind her criminal justice studies at the University of North Dakota and most of her possessions, including her 1990 Mazda MX-6.

The silver sportscar was under water when she hitched a ride from Grand Forks to Minot, N.D., where she hopped a train back home.

“I’m sick of that town,” Gottbreht said Wednesday, nine hours after getting off the train that brought her to Spokane. “I definitely don’t ever plan to live there again.”

Nine North Dakota blizzards and an ice storm this winter, combined with the recent flooding, convinced the 1995 graduate of Ferris High School that Inland Northwest weather isn’t that bad after all.

Gottbreht was one of tens of thousands who abandoned Grand Forks after the Red River charged over its banks and inundated the city of 50,000 on the Minnesota-North Dakota border.

Gottbreht, who lived in the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority house on the university campus, is bitter about her experience.

She said North Dakota authorities were way off in their predictions about when the river would flood. As a result, crews didn’t start erecting sandbag levies until it was “way too late.”

Officials also said the Red River likely would crest at about 49 feet. The water actually rose to more than 54 feet, Gottbreht said.

“They told us we would never flood on campus, and now my car is under 4 feet of water.”

Gottbreht went on a weekend trip and wasn’t in Grand Forks on Friday night when water swallowed the campus. She returned Saturday to find she couldn’t get into town to reclaim her belongings.

She arrived in Spokane with the clothes on her back and the few things that were stuffed in her overnight bag.

“The only shoes I have are these Birkenstocks,” she said. “And of course, it’s raining here.”

Gottbreht said she’ll return to North Dakota as soon as the flood waters recede to pick up her car and whatever else she can salvage.

Then it’s back to Spokane, where she plans to enroll at Eastern Washington University to complete her bachelor’s degree before going onto law school.

“Even with the ice storm here, the weather’s not as bad as back there,” she said. “It’s devastating. It’ll take years for them to recover.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo