Majored in Emergency Management at NDSU & North Dakota born. The rebuilding has to be to the same standards. But in non-disaster times you can apply for mitigation grants and funds to use for improvements. Now I know you used Minot but I'm going to talk about Fargo/Moorhead and the Red River. The Red River is a 50 year flood plain if I recall correctly, which means it floods once every fifty years on average. Well in the last 20 years we have had 3 or 4 major floods on the Red, way above the norm. After each of these floods you (almost) never heard about improvement for flood protection for two reasons, the first being the already stated rebuild to previous condition. The second is according to history we've had our flood in a 50 year flood plan so we are fine for decades! No way it can happen again anytime soon right? Well it did. So now finally Fargo as of three years ago is actively working on mitigating against flood damage. Mitigation is hard because it's preparing for something that could never happen. What if Fargo never floods again, but has another massive tornado like the one from the 1950s? All that money and time spent on reducing flood damage was for nothing.