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© Photo by Rich Wisniewski/KMOT-TVFloodwaters inundate a street in Burlington, N.D., a town a mile east of Minot. Burlington was one of the first towns to get hit by the historic floods in North Dakota, according to Rich Wisniewski, a Gloucester County native who works for a TV station in Minot.
One hundred fifty-eight.

Up until recently, that's all Minot, North Dakota, was to Rich Wisniewski. A number.

For about eight years, he'd wanted to be a TV reporter, so, following the advice of his boss at NBC 10 in Bala Cynwyd - where he'd been interning for a year and a half - Wisniewski last year Googled the top 210 television markets in the country, started at 150, and worked his way down through Montana, Wyoming, upstate New York, Florida.

KMOT-TV, the Minot-Bismarck-Dickinson market that ranked 158, was just one of 70 small market stations Wisniewski, a Rowan University graduate, sent his résumé tape to.

Today, seven months after KMOT hired him, Minot is Wisniewski's adopted home.

He watched last week as the worst flooding in the city's history swept through town, swallowing up homes, streets and businesses. He watched, not with the cool, detached eye of someone paid to cover and report the news, but as a resident of the ravaged town, as a neighbor, as a person.

"It was an adrenaline rush at first ... It's a small market, but the first few days, it felt like a number 1, 2 or 3 market," said the 24-year-old West Deptford High School graduate. "But now it's taking its toll. On a personal note, as a reporter, you have to keep your distance. But when you see some of the devastation, you see these homes ... As a person, you drive through and it takes a toll on you.

"There was a point (last) Friday, where I didn't know how much more I could take."

Minot flooded when the Souris River - a 400-mile river that starts in Canada, winds its way down through North Dakota, then swings back up into Canada - overflowed its banks within the last two weeks.

Flooding is not a new phenomenon in Minot, a city of about 40,000 in north central North Dakota. The last major flood the town experienced was as recent as 2009, Wisniewski said. "This year makes 2009 look like a puddle."

Record amounts of snow and rainfall this year, exacerbated by Canada releasing water from its dams and sending it downriver, led to the record flooding, eclipsing the previous worst flood in Minot's history in 1969.

Wisniewski experienced a degree of culture shock when he moved to Minot last winter. People made fun of his Jersey accent (still do). The day he arrived, the high was 10 degrees and there was 15 feet of snow on the ground. From December through April he went into work wearing layers: Under Armour, thermals, a T-shirt, a suit and a heavy North Face jacket.

Then come the spring melt, people started talking about prior bad floods and how bad this year's might be. It was an odd experience for Wisniewski, who tried not to pooh-pooh flooding in the Philadelphia/South Jersey region, but admitted, really, it's not even close.

"When you see flooding around New Jersey and Philadelphia, usually victims of flooding are right along the water," he said. "Some of these houses I've seen swallowed up by water aren't three miles from water."

At the height of the flooding, parts of Minot were evacuated, but Wisniewski, whose apartment is at a higher elevation, hasn't had to resort to sleeping at the office - "But I've been working enough, I could bunk up there" - or staying at a hotel. But he has had to alter his route to and from work with all the roads being closed.

"I have one road left that can get me home," he said. "As long as that road stays clear, I can get home."

He should be able to return to his normal commute soon. Wisniewski said the river crested last weekend and the water has started to recede noticeably. But the damage has been done. Schools, homes, entire sections of the city have been ravaged by floodwaters. Sewage spilled into the river, contaminating the water. It will take months, maybe years, for the city to fully recover.

But Minot is resilient, he said.

"I love to tell stories. I love telling other people's stories, the human element," he said, but, "When it came to journalism, I didn't want to sign up for the mental strain it would take."

Wisniewski posted something to that effect on his Facebook wall the other day. Encouraging words from friends and family helped pull him out of his funk, he said. "It helped me regain my focus."