It didn’t take long for CHI St. Joseph’s Health to find a replacement for its medical helicopter service.
Grand Forks-based Valley Med Flight agreed Tuesday to base a medical helicopter at the helipad of the new St. Joseph’s hospital under construction in Dickinson. Valley Med Flight will also provide fixed-wing aircraft support to southwest North Dakota from its existing bases.
“Our No. 1 concern is access for our patients,” said Reed Reyman, president of CHI St. Joseph’s Health. “We just know that a helicopter needs be based here and we know we have to have access to fixed wing, so we did all we could to get this in place.”
We asked. You answered. The Press survey results show readers have mixed feelings on the boom’s impact; feel Dickinson is a worse place than it was 5 years ago.
The oil boom has changed Dickinson and southwest North Dakota’s way of life — and a majority of people don’t like it, according to a Dickinson Press survey.
Of the 1,310 readers who voted in the survey online or through the newspaper over the last two weeks, 57 percent said they don’t believe the area is a better place than it was five years ago. Sixty-four percent have mixed feelings on the energy industry’s impact on the area, saying it has brought a combination of good and bad impacts.
In response to the survey’s results, Dickinson Mayor Dennis Johnson said he understands there is a “significant minority” who have been negatively impacted by the oil boom, whether it’s because of increased housing costs, a higher cost of living or everyday issues, such as dealing with increased traffic or longer lines at the grocery store.
“In general, what’s happening here is good,” Johnson said. “But it isn’t good for everybody.”
Modular buildings have become a common tool in western North Dakota. Oilfield and construction projects often necessitate the need for temporary structures that can be erected, used and moved at a moment’s notice.
On the outside, the modular classroom buildings being attached to the west wing of Trinity High School have a similar feel. But looks can be deceiving. Inside, the eight classrooms feel like they could be in any actual school building. In some ways, they’re better.
“You’d think you’re in a school,” Dickinson Catholic Schools President Steve Glasser said Thursday while giving a tour of Trinity’s construction and cleanup progress.
“We want our students to feel at home. We really feel this is going to be very comfortable for our students and our teachers.”
Jim and Betty Anton show a picture of the pool table they hid under during the tornado that destroyed much of their home on July 8, 2009.
Editor’s Note: There are literally hundreds of stories and different accounts of the night an EF-3 tornado struck the south side of Dickinson on July 8, 2009. Five years later, we take a look at three families — two of them next-door neighbors — and what they went through that day and in the tornado’s aftermath.
Jim and Betty Anton were sitting in their living room the night of July 8, 2009, when the sky turned dark seemingly in an instant.
Often, they had discussed where would be the best place to take cover in case the threat of a tornado ever turned real. Their house had a basement, but no place down there seemed perfect.
The Antons had ultimately decided they would either go underneath the staircase connecting the main floor and the basement or crawl beneath their pool table. That night, with only seconds to act, the Antons chose the pool table.
Jim Anton knew they had to move fast when he looked out their front window and saw trees flying by.
“He couldn’t finish the word basement’ fast enough, and we went down and got right under the pool table,” Betty Anton said.
“We slid under there like butter.”
As they laid face down under the pool table, the Antons heard what sounded like a train going through their house. Betty’s glasses flew off her face and hit the basement wall, followed by a crunching sound.
“And it was over with,” she said.
As quickly as the tornado came, it was gone. What meteorologists would later describe as an EF-3 “jumper,” moved east across Dickinson and continued out of town.
When all seemed quiet and safe again, Jim Anton pulled himself out from underneath the pool table and carefully walked upstairs. He didn’t linger there.
“He got right back downstairs, got under the pool table and said, ‘The living room is gone,’” Betty said.
Dustin Monke 