G. & C. Moritz, Gazette

In the early hours of the morning of Friday, Sept. 17, Garretson had a thunderstorm with viciously high winds. The storm hit Garretson around 1:00 a.m. and persisted for approximately a half hour, knocking out power when a transformer on 3rd Street was damaged. Power lines also went down in that area.

Emergency vehicles and city crews were out right away clearing the streets for travel, though they could do little about the power situation until after daybreak when Excel Energy crews were dispatched to make repairs.

“Our guys got the streets clear as best they could, and then went back to bed for a short while, then got back up to work a very hard day for us,” said City Finance Officer Anna Uhl.

School was first delayed, then canceled as power was unable to be restored to the school building until later in the day.

“We didn’t have any power back in the building proper until about 12:30 p.m.,” said Supt. Guy Johnson. “We initially went for a 2 hour late start, but as the day progressed we realized that probably would not work at all. The key issue was that without power we wouldn’t have been able to serve food for our students, which was the biggest setback of the day. Not to mention all the technology that we rely on every day. Mr. Schrank didn’t have a handle on our computer situation and servers until after 2 p.m. On the main campus grounds we had a few branches fall down on the playground. Our storage shed on the main campus was also picked up and taken for a ride, and damaged about 90 feet of fence. There was some damage out at the sports complex as well, the wind pushed in the large garage door and the pressure from the wind damaged the smaller garage door to unusability and also damaged the east wall of the building. One of the soccer goals was also picked up and pushed around and damaged about 80 feet of fence.”

A tree fell on Site 13 at Split Rock Park, damaging an occupied RV camper. Luckily, no one was injured.

“Craig Nussbaum used our loader to lift the tree off the RV in question, he did a great job and there was remarkably little damage,” said Uhl. “It could have been so much worse.”

Wind speeds in Baltic were recorded at 73 mph. There was no wind speed reported or recorded for Garretson, but speculation has had gusts potentially reaching 80 mph.

Knocked over trees and broken branches were the majority of damage the storm caused. However, many homes suffered roof damage and there were also reports of automotive

damage from fallen tree limbs and branches. Thankfully, there were no injuries reported and no ambulances needed to be dispatched.

“This was bad, but not anywhere near as bad as the storm we had six years ago (June of 2015),” said Uhl.

That day had multiple lines down and you couldn’t walk the streets without crawling through broken branches.

Humboldt suffered some severe damage similar to our 2015 storm as the straight-line winds tore through the area. The elevator sustained quite a bit of damage, but was able to be brought back on-line later that day.

The line of storms continued eastward, causing damage along its line. Two tornadoes were spotted in Apple Valley and in Burnsville, Minnesota.

Garretson efforts for cleanup began right away, and it wasn’t just city and emergency crews but ordinary citizens that handled the majority of the cleanup.

“One thing I want to say is how happy and proud I am to live in this community,” Johnson said. “When something bad like this happens, I watch the community pull together and help each other in a way that is unique to Garretson. People started cleaning up right away, and then went to their neighbors and helped them clean up. When school was called off for the day our coaches, and kudos to them for quick thinking, gathered up their teams and organized them as work crews, going wherever they were needed. Football, Soccer and Volleyball players all lending a hand, and they were happy to help. From everything I heard, they had fun doing it too! We had volunteers show up at the school with heavy equipment to move our shed back in place that same day. We’re grateful, and it fills my heart with happiness and pride to see how much the members of our community care for each other.”

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