MPR’s Lorna Benson interviews David Gisch, the Emergency Preparedness coordinator for Dakota County, about damage assessment after several tornadoes and funnel clouds touched down along a path south of the Twin Cities. Gisch says the damage is most severe in a farming area just east of Northfield.
SPEAKER 1: We have one home destroyed, which means the roof is gone, walls gone. We have five homes that have major damage, which means portions of roofs are missing, windows are broken, outside walls are down.
And then you start to look at the farmers and they have additional buildings, barns, machine sheds, grain bins, silos that have been destroyed or damaged. We have five that are totally destroyed. I mean, they're gone. There's nothing there.
SPEAKER 2: How powerful do you think it was?
SPEAKER 1: Well, the reports that we're hearing, which are the possibility, no confirmations yet, but the possibilities of an F2, a large F2, which would be wind speeds of 113 miles up to 157 miles an hour, or possibly an F3, which is wind speeds of 158 to 205.
We're just very fortunate that this large of a tornado hit in that sparsely populated area. It's unfortunate for the residents that sustained the damage, but fortunate, in the sense, that it was not a heavily populated area.
SPEAKER 2: Was this a big funnel?
SPEAKER 1: The indication from the state trooper was the base or the bottom of the tornado was a quarter-mile wide. These are estimations now. A quarter-mile wide and the debris cloud was 300-feet high. That means that it indicates a really powerful storm.
SPEAKER 2: How are residents dealing with the damage?
SPEAKER 1: The community is pretty tight down there, and they are bonding together and going to the more severely damaged farms, cleaning them up first, and then working down to the minor damages.
Northfield High School has an FFA class, and they're sending out the group to help out with debris clearing. The Sentence to Serve crews in both Rice County and Dakota County have been or will be assisting residents with cleaning up debris.
And you start talking about some of these huge cottonwoods that were knocked over, two huge elm trees, that's going to take a while to clean up.
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