BAKKEN BREAKOUT WEEKLY Cont. from previous page


charge for the rental either, for however long it is needed. “We were so worried,” said Lily Cline,


15. “Everyone was so helpful. A guy just came here and gave us money. The wom- an who owns the drive-in came over with a $100 gift certificate for food. We are grateful for the town’s help.” Corina Cline said she told the kids


BAKKEN NEWS


Thursday, April 26, 2012n Page 5


to keep a list of everyone who stopped by with food or money so she can thank them. “You just don’t see this. This is a one-


Mott from the burn center a week after the incident. They were home a few days before leaving again last Thursday for a recheck with his doctors. “I hope the doctors will tell me when


I can go to work, because I know that’s when I’ll be better,” he said. He’s on medication for pain and el-


of-a-kind town. Everywhere else we’ve been, people take, take, take, not help,” she said. Mike and Corina Cline returned to


evated blood pressure and a diet of pro- tein drinks to help his cells rebuild skin. He knows it will be weeks — who knows how many — before his doctors will ad- vise his return to a physical life. “I can sleep, but I keep hearing that


‘boom,’” he said. That first Easter weekend was fairly


cold, and even with a few space heaters going, the family got chilly in the high- ceilinged church building. They got instructions for the furnace


and after cleaning it, started it up. The temperature relay malfunctioned and within hours, the temperature inside shot up from 59 degrees to nearly 90 de- grees.


“We’re here to stay. We’ve been searching for a place to fit in, and I can see our


kids growing up here.” – Corina Cline


building cool down and restart it when they wanted heat again. Mike Cline said he had followed in-


They were told to turn it off, let the


structions to turn off the furnace and then the gas, even though it didn’t seem the right sequence, and it was on the re- start that literally all hell broke loose. They think the explosion was caused


by residual gas pent up in the line when he tried to relight the pilot light. His face was burned bright red by


heat, not fire, and it looks mostly normal now, though he’s worried about his eyes. His wife cut off his singed hair. It


stank like fire. His arms, hands and torso are encased


in bandages. Underneath the gauze and netting, his skin is pink and very raw. Corina Cline has become an expert


stop picturing him on fire. “I wish I could burn it out of my


in changing her husband’s dressings and de-breeding the dead skin. That she can do. It’s more difficult to


memory,” she said. They are hurting as a family, but they


are still hopeful. He and his son had been scheduled


to start work April 16 and said his em- ployer has promised to hold jobs open for them. They bought the church sight unseen


Mike Cline said it was a good find, be- cause the company will have work dur- ing oil development and afterward. A pay range of $24 to $30 an hour,


plus benefits like health insurance were mighty attractive. He hadn’t worked since early February. “We were so anxious. Here I had a


Kentucky and headed north, debt free. Corina said when she walked into


for $39,000, beating out two other re- cent offers for a building that has been empty for years. Because of the oil boom, housing is suddenly a prime commodity in outlying towns like Mott, which has dwindled to less than half its peak popu- lation in recent decades. The Clines felt lucky to find housing


in Mott, especially something with 6,000 square feet of space for their big family. Mike Cline connected with it on the


Internet, the same way he did his oil field job. He’d heard about all the work in North Dakota and it didn’t take much to convince his family. “There’s not a lot going on (in Ken-


tucky). It’s hard to get a job, and Corina has always wanted to come up north,” he said. He posted his resume online and had hardly hit the send button when he started getting calls from the oil patch. By March 23, he and his son, a train-


the church building that first day, she thought, “This is it. This is home.” Mike Cline felt the same way. “I’m


job and there was nowhere to rent. I saw the church (online) and I said to Corina, ‘That could be it, right there,’” he said. They sold their home and acreage in


ready for us to stay somewhere. The kids need roots,” he said. They’ve lived in eight other states. Crane, a Mott native and city attorney,


said it isn’t easy for people like Clines to get a foothold, even on the edges of the oil patch. He said not everyone who’s migrated


in makes it stick, but some do. He hopes the Clines are among them. “Those of us who watched the town


slowly die, we feel, ‘Thank God they’re here, we don’t feel so lonely now,’” Crane said. He said the community has set up a


benefit account at the Commercial Bank of Mott, P.O. Box 40, Mott, N.D. 58646, to tide the Clines over until they can get on their feet again. Corina Cline said there’s no doubt


ee electrician, had acceptance letters to work out of Dickinson for Denny’s Elec- tric, an established name in the region.


they will stay in Mott. They will do what they have to do, get her husband healed, turn a church building into a home and deal with their medical bills. The first


LAUREN DONOVAN/Tribune


TOP: Some of the newest immigrants to North Dakota’s oil patch suffered a setback just days after pulling in from Kentucky. Corina and Mike Cline are in Mott, waiting for him to heal before he can start the job he came here to take. Their children are Lily, 15, Jacob, 2, Elisabeth, 6, Josh, 22, and Shawn, 7. BOTTOM: Mike Cline is still in bandages, but his 2-year-old son, Jacob, finds comfort in his father’s embrace after the trauma of his father’s accident and the family’s abrupt separation.


one for $17,000 only covers emergency care at Hettinger and the airlift. They would be insured through his new job; but not now. “We’re here to stay. We’ve been search-


ing for a place to fit in, and I can see our kids growing up here,” she said.


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