By Catherine Kim
Rock Center
When we set out to tell the story of the jobs boom in Williston, North Dakota, I had no idea that while we were out reporting the story, we’d also feel like we were living part of it. The first clue should have been when one local said to me, “If you can’t find a place to stay while in town – you are more than welcome to stay with us. We’re living out of our office.” Or when another said, “Drive safely because there are big trucks all over and give yourself extra time because traffic is bad.” And then there was this: “Don’t go out to eat anytime between 11 a.m. and 6 p.m., the lines are insane. Make sure to plan ahead.”
When we began to firm up our travel plans to Williston, my associate producer, Katie Yu, volunteered to book flights and hotel rooms for our team. We had been warned that the surge of jobseekers new to town was making available housing, hotels and shelter virtually impossible to find, but still I thought, surely, seven rooms will open up in time. Right?
Almost immediately, Katie discovered every hotel and motel in Williston – and there are about a dozen – were sold out. We expanded our search to much of northwest North Dakota. We called about 35 more hotels, motels and B&Bs and even after that, we only had two options: a Best Western two hours away in Montana or a run-down mobile home rental in an open field an hour away. Yikes. I knew we’d be working 12-14 hour days, but two to four hours of commuting on top of that? No way. I would have rather slept in our rental car.
We needed some luck. I called the Mayor’s office and a local realtor who seemed like a go-getter to ask for advice. They said that they would make a few calls on our behalf, but told us to forget about conventional lodging. The day before we left for Williston, our realtor friend found a new home for us to rent before the new owner moved in. There was no fridge, no TV, no Wi-Fi and no curtains, but we would have clean beds. Perfect. Our correspondent, Harry Smith, would take the master bed and bath. My associate producer and I would take the two twin bedrooms upstairs and share a bathroom. It was ours for $600 a night. Now we just needed rooms for the crew. A few hours later, the mayor’s office called. They found four rooms with a small catch. It was at a Bible camp. I chuckled and asked how far from town was it located. 20 minutes. We snatched the rooms at $50 a night.
Everyone had told us about how difficult housing would be to find. We knew we were fortunate. Our early start times meant the crew had to tiptoe out of camp in the wee hours, just as others were assembling for morning prayers. Back in the house, my associate producer, Katie, and I would unexpectedly end the night yapping about the next day’s schedule while hanging out in our PJs across the hallway from each other. It’s an amusing business. Being new to NBC, Katie and I had just met and here we were politely asking who was taking the first shower in the morning. During the day, while we’d interview those new to town and ask how they were making due, we also found ourselves making due. Katie didn’t have any electricity in her room for the first few days, so she’d use her iPhone as a flashlight to move around in the dark. Navigating to and from our new home also got off to a bumpy start. We were in a brand new development and our neighborhood wasn’t yet on the GPS. Still, we were all pretty thrilled. We knew folks were living out of their cars and some even sleeping in tents – so we had no complaints.
While I had a taste of what it was like to have to secure housing before getting to town, I didn’t find eating out the hassle so many people had warned us about. Given our long days with infrequent breaks, most of the time when we were grabbing meals – it was either on the fly or during off hours. I never encountered the famous long lines or packed restaurants. That is, until my last meal in town. We finished early and I thought I’d take advantage of the extra time to get some food to go and catch up on other work back home. I set out toward Applebees for a salad, made the turn into the parking lot only to be stunned that it was closed. How could it be closed at 8 p.m. Isn’t Applebees usually open 24 hours? Or at least until midnight?
I wondered if it was closed because they couldn’t hire enough workers to keep it open at night. We had heard from locals that this was a problem. I made a U-turn to find something else. I passed several restaurants and fast food joints, but everything looked busy. At this point, I’m realizing I didn’t have lunch and I’m kind of starving. I should have anticipated this. I saw Hardee’s ahead and made a bee line there.
Long lines at the drive-thrus in Williston are a pretty common sight. In fact, there are long lines everywhere during peak hours. I thought I was getting dinner late enough to avoid the crowds, but as I pulled up to Hardee’s, I saw the ‘long lines’ issue from an entirely different perspective now. I’m hungry, need to eat and there are eight cars in drive-thru. I couldn’t bear it, but as I tried to back out, I found myself boxed in by the drive-thru lane. Several pickup trucks were packed in tight just behind me. I thought, “I’m never going to get out of here. Deep breath.”
I kept hunting with several false starts in and out of restaurant parking lots. I spotted a Taco Johns and turned into the lot only to find more big lines. I got stuck in a mini traffic jam in the lot and escaped onto a side street where I idled for a few minutes. I tried to recall where I had spotted grocery stores. Then I thought, “Why do I think they won’t have lines, too?”
It was now almost 9 p.m. I had spent an hour canvassing Williston for easy food. I was miserable. This is when I noticed that the KFC I kept passing, because it had its lights off, was actually open. There were three cars in the drive-thru lane. I cruised right on over. I got “Original Recipe” over “Extra Crispy” and had no guilt. As I pulled up to the drive-thru, I asked the guy at the window if they kept the lights off to keep customers away. He looked at me and said, “What? Oh, the lights are off. Oh, we’re probably just too busy to send someone out there to turn them on. It’s non-stop here. From the moment we open to the moment we close, we’re just slammed and going non-stop. You have a nice night now!” It was classic. Despite the lines, the traffic, the daily hassles, everyone we met in Williston coped with the craziness with such good cheer. Perhaps it’s exactly the right kind of community from which to stage a jobs rush: nice folks, welcoming to visitors, patient and willing to work hard -- very hard.
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We will soon be 30 degrees below F. You left that part out and anyone coming up here without a home to go to will be in real risk of freezing to death. This is not the time to set out to try and just arrive here with no plan and housing and think you will find it.
Great reporting...
Great reporting on only half of the story!
Can't wait to see the whole report. I really hope it is made clear that there is no housing and living in cars through the winter would in all probablity mean freezing to death! Also I am glad you found some friendly people to talk to chances are they aren't locals. Not that all us locals are mean, but most our fed up with the way the town is going. With traffic, higher crime and by higher I mean extremely higher, and horrible accidents. Don't get me wrong we had crime, drug problems, and accidents before just not as frequently. I feel for people that are just wanting to make a living or support their families! To them I say Welcome, but please respect what used to be a wonderful place to live. God Bless!
Also this is not just Williston, ND it is the whole western side of the state as well as eastern Montana.
Here's an example of what drilling for our own oil does for Americans. Instead we've been buying oil from other countries and they have been getting all these jobs. Oil is a component in almost everything we use from gas, to plastic, to rubber. "Green jobs" are something we can aspire to in the future, but I say we do this in the meantime. This town is growing so fast that they can't fill all the job openings and there's not enough homes to meet the demand for the influx of people. More growth means even more businesses (restaurants, hardware stores, building contractors) and even more jobs. This is a great reporting.
would be major problem for me in transportation just getting there.
Don't believe hitchhiking would be suitable either.
Freezing to death doesn't sound to be a great option though.
Secure a job before you come and pray your new employer has housing.
So let's buy all the OWS protestors a bus ticket to ND ... that fixes everybody's problem, and we'll find out if they really want or are qualified for a job.
These OWS protestors see Big Oil as "evil" and will likely not even bother with finding a job in a place like Williston. Williston is better off without that sort of riff raff.
This oil pretty much is evil becuase it is ruining our state.
There's no place for the OWS protestors to live in North Dakota. They have the right to protest anyways. Big oil is turning my home state in a wasteland, and I agree with my fellow North Dakota, it's ruining our farmland, where a lot of the nation's crop and food comes from.
I am thoroughly revolted that this story involved no discussion of the environmental impacts of the fracturing process. It seems to me that this piece was ultimately a propaganda piece fo the fracking industry. Honesty, I expected more of both Harry Smith and Brian Williams. I am so revolted and have lost respect for both of these "journalists." I would also like to know if Harry Smith is being paid $15/per hour by NBC...because that is evidently an awesome wage.
As with the mythological delusions of what is called "American history", the new conquest, fracking, is presented with the same manipulative misleading. To any that might praise this environmental nightmare as America's economic salvation in South Dakota, I MUST state the obvious. Green technologies have been available for longer than BIG OIL would care to admit, and have done everything in its greed to STOP any development of said technologies with BIG money lobbying. What good will so-called "new jobs" be when the population of South Dakota becomes too ill to work? Again, the media lies to the American public, and the public believes. This is nothing but delusional insanity. I hope that Harry Smith, Brian Williams and company can get their heads out of the pollution-laden clouds long enough to see and report the TRUTH - for a change...
I grew up in this environment, as my family is in the oil business. Have worked this area of Dakota and eastern Montana for years. Yes, there are jobs here and the people will flock here in droves, like they did in the 50's and mid 70's. These companies will forecast many, many millions of dollars to do everything they can to protect the environment while they go about their day to day operations of looking for and actively drilling for oil. Will some damage be done to this environment while they are doing this job? Probably. But unless you walk everywhere an use no petroleum product what so ever (heating fuel, gas for your home, etc.) than all I can say is go ahead and freeze in the dark!
No need to freeze in the dark with alternative green energy
If this is a sample of the kind of "reporting" we can expect from Rock Center, I guess I won't be watching in the future.
I'm happy all these folks are finding jobs, but to gush about how wonderful all this oil is without even mentioning that there are environmental problems with fracking is simply insane. This is journalism; it's boosterism!
If this is the kind of "journalism" we can expect from Rock Center, I won't be watching.
I'm very glad all these folks got jobs, but to discuss the northern Plains oil "bonanza" without even mentioning that there are serious environmental problems with oil and natural gas "fracking" is simply insane. That's not journalism; it's boosterism!
Where was Harry Smith's usual hard hitting reporting? He said nothing about the pollution that the chemicals used in fracking causes to the soil around the drill site and to the water tables and waterways. Here in PA we're experiencing firsthand what fracking does. Wells in the drill areas are already testing positive for poisonous chemicals, and fish are dying in the polluted waters downstream from the drill sites. Oh and BTW? Many of those waters flow directly into the Chesapeake Bay. To Norm1971 and others who only care about the fast way to get jobs into the US, I say, let's concern ourselves with future generations and their health and safety first. You want to bring jobs back to the US, we need to stop giving incentives to US companies who closed up shop in the US to take advantage of cheaper labor elsewhere. We can rebuild the US if we stop pandering to the big companies' greed and force them to either pay heavy taxes on foreign made profits, or bring the jobs back home to America and get a tax credit for "creating" jobs here. But let's not jump on the fracking bandwagon, this is wrong.
Please name 1 incident in North Dakota where fracking has polluted the ground water. Your fracking problems in PA are PA's problem - probably due to shallow fracking. ND is drilling 2 miles down into the Bakken and hasn't had any reported issues with groundwater pollution. Leave fracking regulation up to the individual states, not the EPA.
The key word here is "reported".
You've gotta be kidding.
This is a "news" program and just in passing talk about fracking and there is no mention of the environmental issues at stake. Shame on NBC, Brian Williams and the news department.
What are the fracking environmental issues at stake in ND? Do you have any facts, or ru jumping on the "Fracking is Bad" bandwagon?
Fracking MUST be discussed along with all the so called 'good' stuff about this boom. It is not pure water that is pumped into the rock to remove the oil!
While this is true in some areas, like PA perhaps, it is not the case in ND> There is no communication b/w drinking water and frac formations over 10,000 feet deep.
Paul Moore
Bachelor of Science in Petroleum Engineering & MBA
The key letters here are M, B and A.
It's sad that Harry Smith and Brian Williams are reduced to this kind of pandering.
Rock Center isn't a news show it's just another inexpensive reality show.
What happened to some good journalistic ethics. How can you do a story about fracking and only mentioning it as an afterthought. The environmental consequences need to be factored into the story.
Forget about me as a viewer.
Can't you environmentalist people just shut up for one moment about the environment? Fracking is done below the ground with water. It is not polluting the water system or tapping into it. I'm from western ND. Why must we always have to worry about the damn environment. That is all you nut jobs ever talk about. If it was up to you, the resources put on this planet would never ever be used because omg we are going to hurt the environment. Why don't you quit whining and complaining about it and do something more useful with your time. Complain about something that is worthwhile maybe something like child trafficking or how the REST of america is JOBLESS and in debt.
Nice story but there are so many facts that you left out of your story. I had several of your news crew living next door to me in Williston. Fact one, THERE IS NO AVAILABLE DAYCARE here. Don't come unless you are planning to open one yourself. Fact two, THERE IS NOWHERE TO LIVE WITHOUT PAYING OVER $2000 A MONTH FOR RENT. Fact three, THE STORE SHELVES ARE ALWAY EMPTY. THERE'S 1 MAIN STORE IN WILLISTON AND IT'S WALMART, SO GOOD LUCK THERE. Fact four, FORGET ABOUT EATING OUT UNLESS YOU WANT TO WAIT FOR AT LEAST 2 HOURS ON A LIST OR LONGER IN A DRIVE-THRU. Fact five, CRIME RATE HAS TRIPLED IN TOWN AND OUR CHILDREN CAN NO LONGER PLAY OUTSIDE AND BE SAFE. And believe me, there are so much more information that they didn't share with you. Don't expect to come here during winter time and not know how to dress properly for the weather. Don't come here when you know there's no place to live. Much information that they shared with you should have been researched further.
To those who decry fracking by making general statements that it is destructive to the environment and contaminating the water supply, you make yourselves look foolish and lacking credibility. You jump on the bandwagon and shout foul, ignorant of the facts. The fracking in the Bakken shale happens almost 2 miles below the water table. The well bore has steel pipe and usually 3" of cement in addition to the pipe between the fluids and the earth. the fracking fluid used today is 99.5% water and sand or ceramic beads with the rest resembling household detergent. After drilling and fracking, the drill rig is removed and the land can be returned to its natural state.
Do you really want to continue our dependency on foreign oil imports and jobs lost overseas? Isn't this what people are clamoring about is loss of jobs? Be grateful that the Bakken can take care of 2 vital pressing issues - energy dependence and more jobs.
You did not even interview any local people in Williston to find out the truth of what is happening to Williston in the middle of this oil boom. You did not do Williston any favors with this film. This oil boom happened so fast the town could not and can not handle all of these problems like no houseing, not enough schools, not enough roads and a number of other problems. The local people that were born and raised there and would like to continue living there don't want to live there any more. Crime has more than tripled. This story did more harm than good for the town of Williston. They don't need any more out of towners moving there. There has been 2 other oil booms in the Williston area since the 1950's. When all the wells get up and pumping, the employment will drop, all these oil people will move out and the local people end up cleaning up the town, and paying all property taxes on new roads, street lights, sewer, new schools and all the other assesments. Williston used to be a great town to grow up in and live in. This story did harm to Williston. THANK NBC
I found this story to be very interesting.....I have NOT heard any good news on the job market in countless months,,,This was the first story that offers any hope. I have great respect for the postings regarding the importance of caring for the environment, however, as a counselor, who works with people struggling to find a job, I now have information to offer them. I will, of course, do more research regarding housing and living conditions, I will also provide information to my clients regarding fracking and it's impact on the eco system. However, as a counselor, it is not for me to judge, but to offer support and understanding for those who are going through unbearable sorrow because they can not support their family. Thank you Harry....let's hope this story will help another get through a difficult time.
Great posting! Too many 'environmentalists' grabbing signs and picketing without any information. This is GREAT for the state of ND. A little chaotic with the rush, but to be able to provide everyone with jobs, and for the state to have a budget SURPLUS is fantastic in these times of struggle elsewhere. Any I abosolutely would like to be able to reduce our dependence on the crazy middle-east.
Hey, people. This is the Midwest. The wages here have always been terrible. I think the oil boom is the best thing to happen to ND. I wish it would happen in SOUTH Dakota. This GOP backwater is last in everything, unless you count the number of religious zealots and anti-abortion whackjobs that consistently interfere in your private life. 8 bucks an hour is considered good money here. Of course, the ones that think that are the rich Republicans. They HATE change of any kind, unless it's the kind that shafts the middle class and lines the pockets of their rich constituents, the middle class be damned.
Yes, please. For those of us who are Battlestar Galactica Fans. Please tell use exactly what Fraking looks like.
If this is about Fracking more should be told.
Shame on Rock Center for acting as if this is a safe alternative. Will we think this when their water supply is contaminated ? More should be told about the two sides to this story. I thought Brain Williams had more integrity then this.
i cannot believe Brian Williams did not think it was important enough to discuss the pros and cons of Fracking. What will he say, if the show is still on, when their drinking water becomes undrinkable. There is another side to this story besides jobs. Shame on Rock Center.
James
While this is true in some areas, like PA perhaps, it is not the case in ND> There is no communication b/w drinking water and frac formations over 10,000 feet deep.
Paul Moore
Bachelor of Science in Petroleum Engineering & MBA
whoa.....doom and gloom.....my parents got me the hell out of nd when i was 4.....always said it was the best thing they ever did for me!!!desolate.....cold.....hot.....daylight @ 11 pm during "d s t" months.....no trees....just a lotta nothin' and 1 area code for the whole state should tell ya somethin'!!! I'm sorry to hear of the crime and and nasty events posted here.....ladies.....sharpen your pencils ..... could turn some "harassements" into big bucks with these generous employers and landlords. Ala "Cain" !!!!!
funny how your story doesn't mention a thing about what all this oil is doing to the farmers in this area. my husband and I have been farming for over 20 years in western ND and have been making a good living. now we have oil companies coming on our land and offering us very little money to compensate us for our lost income. we refuse to sign their lease until we get a fair amount, but they have built their sites anyway. the only people who are happy about all this oil are people who own mineral rights but don't have to try and farm around oil wells. these oil companies should be ashamed of themselves. they are billionaires because they screw the land owner out of what they rightly deserve. we are being treated like they are doing us a favor, but we were way better off without them. they are wrecking our fields and our roads and treating us like we are the outsiders.btw we do own mineral rights on some of our land, but it is divided up among 5 siblings. anyway no amount of money is worth what is happening to our land. next time you come to ND for a story, why don't you talk to some area farmers who are trying to make an honest living here. I guarantee most feel the same way as we do.