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.
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.
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.