Submitted photo Jim and Marianne Zarzana stand outside their North Hill Street Home. They shared their memories of the 1993 flooding in their neighborhood.

MARSHALL — Residents of Marshall’s “tree street” neighborhood will never forget the flooding disaster they experienced in 1993.

During a group interview hosted by Jim and Marianne Zarzana at their home on North Hill Street, residents thought back to the days when their basements were inundated with water back-up from their overtaxed neighborhood sewer system. Substantial home damage occurred during both major 1993 floods. The Mother’s Day Flood in early May was followed a month later by the Father’s Day flood.

Former North Hill Street resident Vince LaPorte recalls seeing the manhole explode near the corner of Birch Street and North Minnesota Street.

“I’ve never seen anything like it before or since,” LaPorte said. “The manhole cover flew straight into the air. Water poured out like a volcano.”

Vince and his wife, Anne, were visiting Anne’s sister at Pella, Iowa, during the Mother’s Day flood. Marianne, as a next door neighbor, managed to track them down to alert them about neighborhood flood damage.

In June 1993, Marianne called them at home to ask why they didn’t have their lights on at 2 a.m. because their basement was flooding again. When flood risks occurred for a third time in July, Anne broke a cardinal rule for doctor’s wives by going to her husband’s office to tell him she needed him to come home. Fortunately the July rain only caused a small puddle on their basement floor.

“I was ready for it in July if it had been worse,” Vince said. “Once I had all the tools I needed and knew how to attack the problem, we were spot on.”

Vince lost many of his medical books to basement flooding. He was able to save an antique television that he restored. A friend, Stu Galstad, advised him to put it in a dry place for a month, let it dry out, and then turn it on. After a month, the television worked like a charm.

Residents talked about the irony of the name North Hill Street, noting that their street is flat as a board. The name resulted from the geography of South Hill Street next to Marshall’s hospital in the Morningside Heights neighborhood.

They mentioned how longstanding Marshall families have shared memories of how children used to enjoy toboggan rides that started at the South Hill Street summit. The downhill glides usually carried them all the way across Minnesota Highway 19, which 70 years later is the intersection of Bruce Street and East College Drive.

Bruce Street at the time was a gravel road in Lake Marshall Township. The only neighbor across the road was a farm place owned for many years by Gus and Mary (Van Uden) Roggeman. The farm house still stands next to tri-plexes and East College Drive commercial buildings.

Vince LaPorte said flat geography wasn’t a Tree Street flood factor in 1993. Instead, flood damage resulted from sewer system failure caused by undersized construction, which left the system unequipped to handle water back-up from a major flood.

The LaPortes, Zarzanas and John Allen (another resident of North Hill Street) said 1993 was a coming of age experience for their children. Ten year-old Crystal LaPorte asked her mom if she’d been thinking about all the rain and flooding. When Anne said yes, Crystal asked her if it was all connected (like a curse).

Jim and Marianne’s 8-year-old daughter, Elaine, moved her handcrafted wooden dollhouse and all of its furnishings to her upstairs bedroom. She then went back to take one of her father’s favorite books upstairs. Lastly she demanded the family checkbook.

“I questioned why she needed it,” Jim said. “She got mad and told me that if we lose all our money because the checkbook gets flooded I shouldn’t blame her for it.”

The neighborhood benefited from immediate help from throughout the Marshall area. The city fire department pumped water out of basements into the street. Bob Sternke of True Value Hardware kept the store open all night at the apex of the May flood. An emergency truckload of sump pumps arrived in the middle of the night. Pumps were sold off the truck for the regular price.

Many local contractors were later helpful in the flood recovery process. Jim especially recalls the honesty of Al Hart, owner of Hart Heating and Refrigeration.

“He gave me an $800 estimate to repair our furnace,” Jim said. “I asked if it would work like new, and he told me he wasn’t sure it would work at all. I asked if that meant we needed a new furnace. He told me with a straight face that ‘a man in Minnesota needs a furnace.'”

Marianne became a Minnesota Public Radio source for flood updates after Southwest Minnesota State University speech communications professor Jan Loft referred an MPR reporter to her. The reporter gave Marianne the nickname The Sewer Queen in honor of being an advocate for her neighborhood.

As a creative writing professor, she brought flood anguish to life in a poem called “The Cheetos Lady” about a woman who munched on Cheetos while watching as homeowners dealt with sewer damage.

“It’s not a nice poem,” Marianne said. “I wrote it when I was angry. She chowed down on snack food and stood there watching us suffer.”

She added that The Cheetos Lady and her family faced basement flood issues a month later. Although her view of the flood situation has softened over the years, she said she still can’t bring herself to feeling 100 percent sorry about the Cheetos Lady’s June flood experience.

The group said the Cheetos situation was an exception to the rule in summer of 1993 since flood damage brought friends and neighbors closer together. It made a friendly, caring neighborhood even more cohesive.

“It definitely made us more united,” Allen said. “That was inevitable considering all that we went through.”

The LaPortes agreed that the tree streets were a great place to live and to raise their children, a neighborhood that they’d recommend to anyone.

Vince said its 21st century residents don’t have to worry about another flood disaster like what happened in 1993.

“The flood control dike (located on the north edge of Marshall) and sewer system upgrades offer much better protection,” he said. “We can’t control the fact that we might have heavy rains, but the back-up issue should be history.”

Marshall City Engineer Glenn Olson echoed that conclusion by noting that 1993 was a learning experience that led to the best possible corrective actions.

“I can definitely say that we’ll never again have the exact same situation like what happened in the tree streets in 1993,” Olson said. “It’s always possible that we could have flooding if rain falls directly on the city. If we get more than 4 or 5 inches in a short amount of time, we’ll all be in trouble.”