2 Dead After Storms Blow Through Wisconsin

CBS Local Media ^ | July 2, 2011 11:15 AM

[Hunton Peck]

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – The severe thunderstorms that ripped through the Twin Cities and eventually into Wisconsin Friday night have killed at least two people, authorities said.

The Burnett County Sheriff’s Office reported that an 11-year-old girl was killed when a tree fell on her at a campground in Burnett County. Officials in the area also said at least 21 people were taken to area hospitals with storm-related injuries. Most were treated and released.

The Burnett County Emergency Operations Center has been activated and is set up for storm victims in Siren, Wis.

A search is also underway along the St. Croix River for missing canoeists, authorities said. Straight line winds caused damage across Burnett County, mainly in Grantsburg, Siren and Webster. Numerous trees were down and widespread power outages reported.

Several roads were closed in Ashland County because of trees and power lines that are down. Xcel Energy is also reporting that more than 1,000 customers are without power in Sawyer County.

[Hunton Peck]

This is just after the tenth anniversary commemoration of a deadly tornado that blew apart much of Siren and surrounding areas on 6/18/2001. Lots of vacationers in the area for the holiday weekend.

(My current locale was unaffected except for a power outage)

[Hunton Peck]

The Red Cross has emergency aid stations set up in Grantsburg and Spooner, according to an NWS report that came across on the weather radio.

[reformedliberal]

I have friends outside of Grantsburg. I saw on the map last night how intense it was. I just emailed them. No way to tell if they have power, though. They are on State Road 87.

[Hunton Peck]

I’m not all that close to Grantsburg, but as far as I can tell, there are no destroyed homes, the damage being mostly from fallen trees. The problems I’ve heard of have to do with impassable roads, and no private well water due to continuing power outages.

It sounds as if G’burg was the hardest hit, so I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people there are still without power and landline phone service. They’re asking folks to restrict cell phone use to emergencies only, so I’d say assume they’re only inconvenienced unless you hear something more.

[Hunton Peck]

The Burnett County Sentinel (http://www.burnettcountysentinel.com/detail/72343.html), published in Grantsburg, is posting updates to its story on the storm. Here’s the gist of the latest (I’ve included some statements of locals even though there’s no news value to them, in case anyone here might know the people):

UPDATED Saturday, July 2 1:30 p.m.

According to the Burnett County Emergency Operations Center (EOC), two fatalities have been confirmed due to the storm, including an 11-year-old girl who was staying in a campground in Burnett County. No other details about her, or the other fatality, have been released.

Emergency Management Director Bobbi Sichta said Grantsburg was closed this morning.

“With all the power lines down, we had law enforcement turning people trying to enter the Village of Grantsburg away because of the danger,” she said. That ban was set to be lifted at noon or 3 p.m., depending on cleanup efforts.

At 11 a.m., Sichta said the EOC was just finishing getting reports from all the townships in the county with their damage assessments.

“Grantsburg was definitely the hardest hit area from Friday’s storm,” Dawn Sargent, public information officer said. “Webster, the Yellow Lake area, and Danbury also sustained damage.”

According to Sargent, there were extensive power outages throughout the area and as 11 a.m., they did not know when power would be restored.

She also noted numerous roads are blocked due to fallen trees and other debris.

UPDATED Saturday, July 2 3 p.m.

Within half an hour of the worst part of Friday’s storm, several law enforcement officers were on hand in Grantsburg.

“We set up two incident command centers for tonight’s storm,” Burnett County Sheriff Dean Roland said Friday night. “The one here at the fire hall in Grantsburg and the other is at the Webster fire hall.”

The mobile command truck from Polk County was also set up outside the Grantsburg fire hall.

“It was straight line winds,” the sheriff declared. “Just a typical front moving through — this one just happened to plaster everybody.”

The 90 minutes of fading daylight between the end of the worst of the storm and nightfall found people out assessing damage.

“We don’t have any damage to our house and everybody’s okay,” Lois Carlson said. “We lost our deck furniture, but it’s not like losing some of these trees.”

A common theme in the wake of the storm was the quickness of it.

“I was going upstairs and I noticed it was dark outside and by the time I got back downstairs, the trees were down,” she continued. “We headed for the basement then but I never heard the sirens go off.”

“It really rocked out boat,” Betty Millis said when the storm hit the RVs parked at Memory Lake Park. “It came out of nowhere — it blew our awnings clean off.”

Millis wasn’t alone when it came to damage at the campground.

“It’s been an interesting night,” John Pantellis said. “The wind was blowing and the next thing I knew, the back of the truck was missing.”

A tree branch sheared off the back of his camper.

“That wind took our camper right off its jacks,” Bruce Schutz added. “The awning got torn off, I couldn’t get back in the camper so I had to get into the truck.”

And he could see it all happen from inside the cab.

“The tornado, or whatever it was, came through and snapped those trees right off,” he said indicating oaks along the river. “I was sitting in the truck watching the whole @#$% thing.”

One camper was nearly split in two by an uprooted tree which was blown over. Fortunately, the two teens playing computer games inside the camper escaped without injury.

Pat Kutz was balancing her checkbook when the lights went out.

“Oh that’s annoying,” she thought. “But two seconds later the wind was bending the trees over and I thought we’d all better head to the basement.”

“There was absolutely no warning — none,” she pointed out. “One of our garage doors was open and we had stuff flying out of the garage.”

Like Carlson, Kutz was upset at the loss of her trees.

I hope everyone is okay, but it takes so long to replace a tree,” she noted. “It looks just like Siren back here.”

“We had to run out in the middle of the storm to get our dog — he was out there in the middle of it,” Brendan Kutz added.

The Kutz’s neighbors, Tim and Becky Tessman, had their share of bad storm damage.

They had several white pines on their land snapped like kindling.

“They went down one after another,” Tessman said. “The first one the wind might have brought down, but it may have toppled into the next one and brought it down and so on — like dominoes.”

One of those massive white pines split the garage in his backyard in half.

[Hunton Peck]

As of this posting, the BC Sentinel server is down.

Here's another article from the Inter-County Leader, which also covers the area. The info from the article looks to be a couple hours out of date, with no updates so far, but additional details are included, most notably that the poor girl who was killed was a resident of Hinckley, MN:

Storm blamed for one death, several injuries

The Log Cabin Hollow campground on Yellow Lake near Webster sustained heavy damage in Friday evening's storm that produced strong straight line winds. - Photo by Gary King

Gary King

• Sat, Jul 02, 2011

Sheriff asks nonresidents to stay away from damaged areas BURNETT COUNTY - At least one person is reported dead and several others injured following devastating thunderstorms that ripped through northwestern Wisconsin Friday evening, producing 100 to 110-mile-per-hour winds.

The Burnett County Sheriff's Department reported that an 11-year-old Hinckley, Minn. girl was killed when a tree fell on her at Scenic View Campground on Poquette Lake, about 15 miles east of Siren. There was a second death - a man who suffered a heart attack - initially thought to have been related to the storm but authorities said Saturday afternoon it was not related.

Three persons were critically injured due to the storm, according to Burnett County Sheriff Dean Roland. He said 39 people were known to be injured in the storm, which affected three-fourths of the county's geographical area. Roland said the situation occurred during a holiday weekend when Burnett County sees its population swell from 17,000 to 80,000 people - plus those who came to Wisconsin in light of the shutdown of Minnesota's state parks - and those people are experiencing a lot of frustration as their holiday weekend turns to one of dealing with property damage,loss of electricity and long gas lines.

He asked that nonresidents stay away from the damaged areas. Most of the damage, Roland said, occurred from the west side of Yellow Lake northeast to Birch Island Lake.

The village of Grantsburg is shut down as authorities worry about gas leaks from uprooted trees.

All ATV trails in the county are closed and may be closed for weeks, Roland said.

[Hunton Peck]

I know that campground pretty well, and before the storm there would have been no sky visible from that location — only trees.

[reformedliberal]

Thank you.

I just told my husband that calling is futile, since we can’t do anything, being so far away. They are resourceful folks and have family and friends all over the area.

I expect we’ll hear soon enough.

[Hunton Peck]

Another update posted to the BCS site. It sounds like the situation is pretty stable now; all they seem to be worried about anymore is restoring power:

UPDATED Sunday, July 3 at 11:15 a.m.

Following assessments from all the municipalities with the county conducted on Saturday, the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) has determined that Jackson Township, Webb Lake, A&H and Voyager Village areas were the hardest hit from Friday’s storm.

“We are being told there is a main transmission line down in that area,” public information officer Dawn Sargent explained Sunday morning. “It looks like it could be another day or two without power for those people.”

As of 10:30 a.m., most people were without electricity.

Conversely, in other portions of the county, power is being restored at a pretty good rate.

“Danbury is up and running,” Sargent said. “By 9 p.m. Saturday night, Main Street was fully powered — in fact, the casino had their fireworks as scheduled.”

She said crews are working to get the whole area energized.

“Grantsburg is almost entirely up and running,” she added. “There are a few spotty outages.”

Sargent reported as of mid-morninjg on Sunday, Polk-Burnett Electric Cooperative was reporting 3,800 customers sill without power and Northwestern Wisconsin Electric was reporting 3,000 without power.

“It sure beats the 12,000 customers without power late Saturday night,” she pointed out.