Joey Rohles didn’t quite know what to think when he heard about the second evacuation order that had been given to residents in Minot, North Dakota.

The Sierra High School alum and Minot State graduate had already evacuated weeks earlier, only to have the order lifted and be allowed to go back to living his life as usual, working as a resident treatment advisor for disadvantaged youths.

Going back to the house that he shared with his younger brother Brian – also a Sierra High alum and Minot State graduate – seemed like getting back to life as usual.

But that second order proved to be the one that mattered as the Souris River began to overflow the levees that surrounded the city of just over 40,000 people.  It damaged nearly 1,000 homes and displacedthousands of people in North Dakota’s fourth largest city.

The house that the brothers had recently moved out of now sits nearly ten feet underwater. The house they currently live in is less than 100 yards from where the water line currently rests.

“It was such a surreal feeling when the water actually came because we had already had the first evacuation and then we got to go back. After the first evacuation we had a friend that had rooms open so we moved in there – five houses above the top of the evacuation line,” Rohles said. “The house that we were in was 50 yards away from the river.”

When the floodwaters actually came, Rohles ended up getting called in to work to help move the 40 kids that are involved with the organization he works for to two different cities away from the unfolding disaster.

He’s currently in Fargo and will return to Minot for a class that begins July 5.

Brian Rohles, on the other hand, is still roughing it back in Minot. He’s working 12 hours a day at a local Applebee’s that is still serving residents.

“I talked to my brother and he said that he boiled water the other day and took a sponge bath in the living room,” Rohles said. “They say that the water has crested and that they’re going to cut holes in the levees so that the water will flow back into the river, but they can’t start pumping water until it reaches its natural flow.

“A lot of people lost everything, and it’s kind of depressing to see but I can’t really show that to the kids because their stability relies on my stability. My brother called me and told me that Minot is a ghost town – that it’s just dark and you can’t see anything at night but water.”

And even though Rohles spent his formative years in Manteca and played his first two years of college football at Delta, Minot has become his adopted home ever since he made the decision to go and further both his education and his playing career.

“I came up here and I fell in love with it. This school and this town saved my life,” Rohles said. “I didn’t think I was going to go anywhere after Delta, but I decided to come up here and I enjoyed it so much I moved my little brother up here.

“That’s what makes it so to see the town the way it is right now.”