When the Red River of the North inundated Grand Forks, N.D., in April 1997, images of the water-filled streets and burning downtown buildings filled the TV news. In the following weeks and months came the stories of victims who lost their homes and the long-term effort of recovery.

But sometimes, the little things are what make a disaster the most awful.

When the next Christmas came, city resident Peg Rogers’ mother, who always made krumkake for the holiday, realized the iron mold for the treat had been lost.

“She was inconsolable,” reports Ashley Shelby in “Red River Rising” (Borealis Books, $24.95), a new book about the disaster that tells of the people who suffered, the city, state and federal officials who struggled to help, and the wrenching battle to place blame.

Within a week of the flood crest, 26,605 people had applied for disaster aid and 80 percent of the homes in the city suffered damage, many of those destroyed by the overwhelming water. More people sought help later, and many lost homes to flood-control efforts.

But Shelby tells more than a story of numbers. She has teased out details and recollections that bring to life the people of a tough city and let the reader share their experience.

In addition, she explains in detail the efforts of weather forecasters to predict the height of the flood, how they warned early of potential record flooding, and how they came to be blamed when their forecast of a 49-foot flood proved well below the eventual height of the water.

There are no real heroes in this book, though the closest may be then-Mayor Pat Owens, who struggled to organize recovery efforts while battling complex bureaucracy, feuding citizens and nature out of control.

“I felt like a fist hit me. You read in the Bible, the end of the world? That’s how it felt,” Owens said of the moment when, exhausted from working to organize the fight against the flood, she learned that her city’s downtown was in flames.

Helicopters were brought in to drop water on the fires because trucks couldn’t navigate the deeply flooded streets.

At one point a giant chopper was sent to douse a small house fire, dumping its load on the building.

“When eight tons of water hit the roof, the house crumbled like origami and sank into the flood waters surrounding it,” Shelby reports.

Today, the recovering city has a monument to the flood, built of bricks salvaged from destroyed homes. The U.S. flag on top flies at 54.35 feet, the height the river reached in 1997. The flag of the city of Grand Forks flies at 28 feet, the height at which the river is considered in flood.