Flooding torments N.D. town's residents

DEVILS LAKE, N.D. - Hundreds of families displaced. Traumatized children causing problems in schools. Landowners losing everything and sickened from the stress. It sounds like New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, but these symptoms are appearing much farther north — in North Dakota. A popular lake often used for recreation is rising ominously and spreading, drowning homes and lucrative fields of crops.

"It's like a cancer," says Joe Belford, a business owner and county commissioner.

Devils Lake, west of Grand Forks in the north-central part of the state, has risen about 26 feet since 1993. If it keeps rising and the area's "wet cycle" continues, as some meteorologists predict, the lake could rise an additional 11 feet by 2012.