• Before you discard your personal information that you no longer need, such as credit card receipts, billing statements, and pre-approved credit card offers, shred them using, at best, a diagonal-cut shredder.
• Create unique passwords and personal identification numbers (PINS) and avoid using easily available information such as mother's maiden name, date of birth, or last four digits of your Social Security number.
• Do not give your Social Security number to people or companies that you do not know.
• Guard your mail from theft. Promptly remove your incoming mail from your mailbox and place outgoing mail in locked collection boxes at your local Post Office.
• As an extra measure of security, install a lock on your mailbox, even if mail theft is not an identified problem in your neighborhood.
• Before disclosing personal information, even to people you know where you shop or do business, insist on knowing the reason(s) your personal information is required and how it will be used.

• Dumpster Diving, one of the easiest ways for them to appropriate your personal information.
• Mail Theft from unsecured residential mailboxes. According to statistics, mail theft most often takes place at unprotected and easily accessible mailboxes in public places.
• Shoulder surfing takes place when a thief watches or listens literally over your shoulder as you enter your PIN into an ATM machine. They may even follow you home or your place of work to gather additional information about you.

• Phishing and Pharming: While phishing is a scam in which consumers are tricked into entering their personal information via a bogus email and website form, pharming occurs where hackers steal personal information from numerous people simultaneously through something known as "domain spoofing". They take over a DNS server and redirect user information to a new website that they use to gather, collect, "pharm" illegal information.
• Skimming: Thieves quickly and temporarily steal a credit card and run it through a skimmer, a credit card reader that has been reprogrammed to steal information off the card.

• Safeguard your personal information. Never take simple things for granted.
• Carry with you only the information you need. Always keep your personal information and documents in a safe and secured place of your choosing.
• Order and review a copy of your credit report at least once a year.
• Shred documents containing your sensitive information before discarding them.

By: Mark Boardman

In April and May of 1997 the Red River, bordering North Dakota and Minnesota flooded across the Red River valley causing $3.5 Billion worth of damage, making it one of the most expensive natural disasters ever.

The winter of 1996-97 was particularly harsh in the area with a succession of winter storms piling up massive amounts of snow over the large floodplain. Two of the worst-hit towns were Fargo and Grand Forks which had a record amount of 117 inches and 98.6 inches of snowfall on the two towns respectively over the winter.

The Red River flows north into Lake Winnipeg and as it flows north the temperatures get colder. This causes a problem with ice jamming, where the river freezes and the waters flowing from further south begin to back up against the ice dam. This is a frequent concern for the local community and in an effort to prevent ice jamming sand was dumped on the icy river to help melt the ice and increase the flow.

Flood warnings were put out for the region as early as February and the National Weather Service (NWS) predicted a 49-foot crest at Grand Forks. This peak prediction was not updated until April 14th which was just 4 days before the start of the flood. There were some complaints that the NWS could have made earlier and better crest predictions, but what isn't in doubt is the efforts the residents of Grand Forks and Fargo made in trying to save their towns.

The community built up dykes with sandbags and clay to a height of 52 feet, which was 3 feet above the NWS prediction. Students were even excused classes to help in the efforts. With the 52 feet barriers to the river in place, the residents thought they would be spared. Alas, the sudden thaw of this brutally harsh winter's snowfall over such a large floodplain was more than the residents could have imagined. In Grand Forks, the waters peeked at 54 feet and completely overwhelmed the town. The flooding began on April 18th and town after town along the Red River became inundated with floodwaters well above previous records.

The topography of the Red River valley is very wide, and very flat, leaving nothing to bar the way of the floodwaters once they had broken through their banks. As a result, the floods reached up to 3 miles inland (imagine being flooded by a river 3 miles away!) The waters in Grand Forks, at 54 feet, were now 26 feet above the usual flood stage. A massive evacuation of the residents (75% of a population of 52,000) had taken place and this was repeated in all the towns affected by the flood. This evacuation helped with the remarkable statistic that not a single death occurred as a result of the flood despite its massive scale. Also, a large fire ignited in Grand Forks engulfing 11 buildings, including 60 apartments.

The floodwaters eventually began to subside on 23rd April but took a long while to completely recede. The cleanup operation was on a massive scale. 20,000 volunteers flew in to help the beleaguered residents who had to throw away virtually all of their possessions. Slowly but surely the area returned to normal but those who lived through it will never forget the spring flood of 1997 and will be hoping the next great flood won't be in their lifetime.

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