I was in Grand Forks during the big flood.
I had friends who owned the largest construction company in the area (it wasn’t very large) and as the water receded they went to work-—moving mud, shoring up dikes, digging trenches for draining and so on.
Some days in FEMA arrived and told them to shut down immediately, because only FEMA could review the damage, survey the terrain and prescribe necessary remedies. This, of course, would take several weeks (at least) to complete.
My buddy and his family (and everyone else with a tractor, a backhoe, a blade, a shovel) shrugged their shoulders and went back to work. They had most of the basic dams and dikes and ditches completed when FEMA returned to begin their assessments.
MUCH of their fundamental work remains in place today.
We spent a week in the rain, building dikes, one sand bag at a time.
When it was over, the sound of back-up alarms was everywhere. I asked a friend what the racket was about and was told they were removing the dikes we'd built.
When I asked "Aren't they going to make the flood infrastructure permanent?", I was told that it blocked the view of the river. That was the third highest crest on record, the '93(?) flood was worse.
I guess they finally learned.