PEMBINA, N.D.

Forget the federal flood relief money President Bill Clinton promised. Publisher’s Clearinghouse could come to the rescue of Meridith Gozdal, who was forced out of her home here by the bulging Red River.

Gozdal picked up her mail Wednesday at the Masonic Lodge in St. Thomas, N.D., for the first time in four days, and under a mound of credit card applications and a pet magazine, sat a fat, rectangular letter notifying her that she is ‘‘scheduled’’ to win $1 million in 48 hours.

‘‘We don’t have problems anymore,’’ her husband Todd Gozdal teased. ‘‘We’re going to win Publisher’s Clearinghouse. All right!’’

Her family could sure use the money if the river decides to wreak the same havoc it did in Grand Forks, she said. She and her husband, both sets of in-laws and her sister’s family evacuated the Drayton area recently.

With no other relatives to stay with, the Gozdals turned to the home of a friend of a friend in Milton, 40 miles west of here. Todd’s parents are renting an apartment in St. Thomas, and Meridith’s parents are living in a camper off a dirt road in Kittson County (Minn.),15 miles to the northeast.

They’ve been uprooted. That, combined with all the work they’ve done over the years to make their home cozy, has taken its toll on the couple.

And their cats, too. One of their two cats got car sick on the long drive to Milton, and left a mess in the pickup.

But the Gozdals returned Wednesday to this town of about 900 and joined fellow residents in packing the last of their belongings. The couple took a television from their sister’s house for their parents to use as well as some videos, including ‘‘Blues Brothers,’’ ‘‘Stripes,’’ and ‘‘Crimson Tide.’’ The town was evacuated at 3 a.m. Monday, though National Guard soldiers allowed people to come back during daylight to collect what they may have overlooked in the early-morning scramble.

Soldiers set up a checkpoint in which they tracked cars going in and out of the city by recording the license plate numbers. Everyone had to be out by dark and won’t be able to return until the river level crests and settles down.

That will be at least a few days, if not longer, Drayton Fire Chief Francis Bellamy said. The National Weather Service has said it expects the river to crest Thursday or Friday at 48 or 49 feet. But the fact that the water is rising only a tenth of an inch per hour leads Bellamy to believe it will crest sooner – and at 46 or 47 feet. It reached 45.31 feet at noon Wednesday.

Some parts of town looked deserted Wednesday afternoon, while a couple blocks on South Third Street were jammed with minivans and pickup trucks with trailer hook-ups. Vehicles were stuffed to the ceilings with clothes and furniture. It looked as if a bunch of people had over-packed for college by taking everything except the kitchen sink.

One of those was Sharon Dakken, who had her washer and dryer loaded onto a trailer. Another woman had her refrigerator and electric stove taken away. And what they left behind – used couches or rusty dishwashers that weren’t working very well to begin with – were mounted above the first-floor of their homes in strange and creative ways. Most used wooden beams; Nancy Nelson laid wooden closet doors from the basement across the top of a round carpet-cleaning machine.

Volunteers from neighboring towns estimated that, in the past three days, they’ve helped people in 60 Drayton homes move out their furniture. The items will be stored at homes and warehouses in the St. Thomas area. While the volunteers said they were glad to help, the generosity of some St. Thomas folks left a few Drayton residents feeling guilty.

‘‘We had one woman who didn’t want to take up too much space on the trailer with her things,’’ volunteer Jeff Whelan said. ‘‘You could tell she had a lot of nice things and that she wanted to move them, but she wouldn’t let us. We had to keep telling her that we had plenty of room for all her things and other people’s too. I mean, we have three pickups and three trailers.’’

Dakken said she felt bad that she had been moving furniture for four hours while others were sandbagging, and still more sandbagging could be done. (About 20,000 sandbags filled by volunteers at the Emergency Operations Center in St. Thomas were dropped off in town by the morning, said Gail McMartin, a St. Thomas city council member and one of three disaster relief coordinators.)

She also said she has mixed emotions about packing up most everything in her house, when a clay dike bolstered by plywood stretches down river throughout the 2 miles of town.

‘‘Most of the time I think what I’m doing is worth it, because everything will definitely be saved,’’ she said. ‘‘But with the plywood just put up, this dike really looks wonderful and stable. Then I feel foolish for packing everything.’’

About 40 families who have been evacuated from the northeast part of the state are staying in St. Thomas, 25 of whom are Drayton residents. About 15 miles west of the river, St. Thomas is in no danger of flooding; in fact, water run-off from fields already came and receded, McMartin said.

‘‘Their resources are strapped because of what they’re doing in the Grand Forks area,’’ she said. ‘‘All that’s happening here – dispersing food and water, hauling sandbags from here to Drayton in trucks, finding housing for evacuees – is happening because we’re such a close-knit community. Farmers and businesses have made donations, and hundreds of people are volunteering to sandbag.

‘‘People here have had the opportunity to watch what happened in Grand Forks,’’ she said. ‘‘They’ve had time ever since then to prepare to get their things out, and they are. But they’re also coming back to sandbag and help save the town, and I think that’s incredible.’’