Star Tribune from Minneapolis, Minnesota • Page 21

THURSDAY, JULY 27-2000 GRANITE FAILS TORNADO STAR TRIBUNE PAGE A21 Iftaitaedl tomes, broken hearts Neighbors learn gS -r rT -'fu 1 I Star Trbune photo by Richard Sennott Mark Bakker's face showed the exhaustion and despair many felt Wednesday as he watted along Hwy. 212 to find out if he could return to his house, which was in the hard-hit western part of Granite Falls. Some residents were issued permits to return, but they were slow in coming. how suddenly one can lose a home By Kavita Kumar Star Tribune Staff Writer GRANITE FALLS, MINN. Neale Deters held back the tears until he found the ripped-out ventilation fan from his attic under a mess of brush strewn across his backyard.

He kicked the fan, then let the nightmare of the past 24 hours seep out through his sobs. His son, Randy, and son-in-law, David Patnode, stood with him in an embrace for a few minutes Wednesday afternoon in front of their now backless house. From where they stood, the Deters saw their neighborhood of 25 years trashed in heaps of rubble. Tuesday night's tornado destroyed many of the houses on 8th Avenue, the Deters' street, and on 9th, sometimes leaving only the foundation where a neighbor's house once stood. "This is home, or at least what's left of it," Deters' wife, LaVonne, said through tears.

"I didn't want to come home, because it isn't home anymore." The sad irony of their loss was not lost on the Deters. They put in new windows Tuesday, just before the storm blew into town at 55 miles per hour. They spent thousands of dollars last year on remodeling their bathroom and basement. Now they will have to start over again, not an easy proposition for a retired couple. "I have to find a new place to live now, but where and what that will be is what I don't know, Deters said.

"We've worked years our whole lives to build this house up, and then, whoosh! In a couple of minutes it's gone." The Deters' garage was demolished by the twister, which also smashed their three cars. A large uprooted tree from a neighbor's yard rested upside-down against the roof. Metal sheeting was wrapped around what was left of the tree in their back yard. Shattered glass, pieces of insulation, splintered wood and remnants of their house lay splattered everywhere throughout their lot. "It looks like a war zone to me.

I've never seen anything like this," said David Deters, 39, Neale and LaVonne's son, his voice cracking. "Mom and Dad explained to me on the phone last night what happened, but it's something you can't explain verbally. You have to see it for yourself. It totally amazes me that four minutes, can do ihis. It kind of leaves you Storm and aftermath The Deters had just sat down for dinner when they heard the warning sirens.

From their doorway, they saw the funnel cloud forming in the distance, with pelicans circling around it in the eerie silence. They hurried down to the basement and sought shelter under a wooden table beneath the stairs. "I heard a crunch and then a real sharp crack," Deters remembered. The storm passed in minutes, and he "It's not just the buildings, but the community of the neighborhood that was ripped apart by the destruction of the tornado," he said. "But Granite Falls is a strong town we've been through a lot." Even while they surveyed the damage, the Deters talked about how bad it could have been.

"It's a real miracle we survived," LaVonne said. "It's hard to see all of your things gone, but it could've been a lot worse. So I guess you have to be thankful for what didn't happen." Sheriffs house damaged Rich Rollins, sheriff of Yellow Medicine County, was out spotting the tornado while his wife and two daughters took shelter in their basement. One daughter's car had come home from the body shop at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, a short time before the tornado damaged the same side that had just been fixed.

A large ash tree crashed into the roof of the house; pulled-up roots wrecked the family's swimming pool. Another car was damaged, and plaster in the house was split as though it had been chopped with a hatchet. But no family member was injured, "we're very fortunate," he said. Insurance claims Firefighter Mark Henderson also went out to spot the tornado west of town, and when he did, he feared the funnel would hit his rig at right angles. But the driver gunned the truck and got out of the way in time.

Henderson had other worries Wednesday. He's the town's State Farm Insurance agent and had to brace himself to serve clients whose houses were demolished or damaged, perhaps 200 claims in all. The insurance company sent in a catastrophe team that rented a large downtown office and will be there for at least two months. Team representative Paul Price, of Woodbury, said 17 to 25 people will help Henderson's three-person office. "We have a number of clients who lost everything," Henderson said.

He has had some disaster experience. His office is near the Minnesota River, and in 1997 water almost reached the first floor. He said he sold about 150 flood-insurance policies before flooding hit Granite Falls that year. And earlier this year, in May, his office handled about 700 hail-damage claims. Huddled in basement Steve and Vickie Zumhofe and their 17-year-old twins huddled in their basement as the storm ripped off their roof and half the second floor, demolished three vehicles and, he said, "took every tree in the yard." His thoughts during those moments? "Just hold on and pray that the whole thing didn't come caving into the basement." Church in the evening About 30 people gathered for an evening prayer service at Granite Falls Lutheran Church.

Some said they came to begin the healing process, and many of them wept during the service. Eldora Pederson said, "We don't have any home to go back to anymore, but it was kind of like home tonight here at church." Staff writer Robert Franklin contributed to this report saw the debris littering the stairs. But it wasn't until he saw the sky from the middle of the basement stairs that he realized his house had been hit hard. Shocked, the two assessed the damage and started collecting precious family mementoes and important papers. They left the house a few hours later, carrying a few suitcases and handbags while they picked their way carefully through streets blocked by the tornado's plunder.

They met hundreds of their neighbors at the community center set up as a temporary shelter for those displaced by the storm. Their son, Randy, a paramedic from Clear Lake, arrived shortly afterward with his daughter, Darian. Randy brought with him about 100 Teddy bears that had been donated earlier to the Ridgeview Ambulance Service and handed them out to children in the shelter. The Deters spent the night at a friend's house a few miles east of town. Their other daughter and son, Sandra and David, came Wednesday morning armed with bottles of water and a video camera.

The family waited with hundreds of other residents for hours Wednesday afternoon to gain access to their house. In line to get a permit to enter the devastated area, they talked with frustrated and tired neighbors, exchanging stories about the night before. David saw his classmates from high school who, like him, had come back to help brothers, sisters, parents and friends. "It's kind of a big, intricate web," he said. "We all moved away, but still call Granite Falls our home." In many ways, the tornado was not just an individual or family catastrophe, but a communitywide disaster, David said.

TV storm coverage: When is it too much? Some see vigilance, others see overkill By Chris Havens Star Tribune Staff Writer How much is too much? That was the question Twin Cities TV stations wresded with in deciding how to cover Tuesday's storms. Giving up-to-the-minute updates and pictures of a storm's progress is part of the lifeblood of a TV news operation. But while local news directors saw the storm as an opportunity to use their latest technology to warn viewers, others saw it as alarmist and overkill. "When it comes to saving lives or property, it's not overkill," said Alan Beck, assistant news director at KMSP-TV, Channel 9. But TV viewer Kathleen Farber of Minneapolis said a coworker's daughter had a hard time sleeping Tuesday night because the storm reports scared her.

"I thought it was overkill," Farber said. Said Kris Bunton, a journalism professor at the University of St. Thomas: "They TV stations do need to warn people, and they do that really well with the graphics and models and tracking. The problem is, when it switches to wall-to-wall coverage it begins to feed on itself and become scarier, than it might be." WCCO-TV, Channel 4, was first on the air with coverage of the tornado at 7 p.m. Tuesday, about an hour after the storm hit: Granite Falls.

By 8 p.m., the other: stations were tracking it with cov-' erage that lasted through their 10 p.m. newscasts. While viewers might have' missed their favorite shows, get-' ting the word out was more im-j portant to local news directors. "We're going to err on the side of warning," said Ted Canova news director at WCCO. "I think for sure that it's easy for someone to say it was too much until it, hits your house." Said Bunton: "They do need to find a balance between informing' me as a viewer that this can be a' problem or deluging me par-, don the pun as a viewer so; that I'm whirled into disbelief." The news directors agreed that" finding balance is a difficult tie.

"Clearly, we want to provide public safety and public service," said Tom Lindner, news director I at KARE-TV, Channel 11. easy on Wednesday to say some of the neighborhoods weren't that bad." Canova said that he could understand people who felt that the coverage was too much, but that he'd "rather be in the business of warning people than fearing some viewers aren't seeing reruns." Many viewers don't understand that not everyone is watching TV at the same time, and it's important to keep giving for those who just tuned in, said Scott Libin, KSTP-TV, Channel news director. Tuesday night was the first time this year that WCCO-AM radio decided on wall-to-wall-coverage. It stopped coverage of Tuesday night's Twins-Boston game to switch to weather. It takes a dire weather threat in the thick of the metro area for such coverage to occur, said Jeff McKinney, anchor and editor at WCCO.

For part of the evening, McKinney was host to coverage that included updates from the station's weather forecasters and calls from listeners talking about, what was happening in their neighborhoods or on the roads where they were driving. "Our coverage is predicated on i threat," McKinney said. "Torna-j does pose a deadly threat. As I soon as the severe threat is over, I so is our coverage. We're not any more alarmist than what the I weather calls for." KMSP's Beck said it was the first time in his 2 years at the station that he didn't receive any negative responses for interrupting programming.

Nancy Kluver, of Mounds 1 View, watched the storm coverage and said it was informative and didn't go overboard. "Because Granite Falls was hit so bad, you can see why it storm coveragel needed to be on the air so much," she said. "It was coming this way." TORNADO from Al Those returning to their homes told to be 'very, very careful' meeting. "So please be patient with us. We're doing the best we can on an hour's sleep," he said.

"And we know most of you are in the same boat. We've all got to pull together, and cut each other a lot of slack." There have been some snafus, he said. Volunteers were allowed into parts of the damaged area before residents, angering some residents and the mayor. He said he had to order five times that residents be allowed in before officials assigned to the area eased restrictions. Most of the damage was confined to houses.

Also destroyed were two major buildings at a residential treatment center for people with gambling and alcohol problems. They were moved to other cities. Ventura tours scene Ventura interrupted his vacation, which was celebrating his 25th wedding anniversary, to fly by helicopter from Fort Ripley to Granite Falls. "The devastation's remarkable" as seen from the air, he said. On the ground, "the people seem in fairly good spirits, I think.

Good Minnesotans will pick up the broom and the shovel and do what needs to be done." People haven't lost their sense of humor, he said, and neither had he. He joked with some residents about interrupting his second honeymoon. "Next time," he said, "send us a card or a letter. You don't have to go to this extreme to get me to Granite Falls." Ventura ordered 130 National Guard soldiers to the scene Tuesday night to help secure the area. Police, sheriff and State Patrol officers from a 50-mile radius came to help, and most worked through the night.

Two miles west of town, Doug and Connie Peterson wept as they surveyed their farm, where only their damaged house and two grain bins remained standing. "1 can't see staying here," said Connie Peterson, 51. "This is the end. The farm economy is bad enough. Doug is 56, his brother Bob is 62.

1 think we're done." Officials slowly allowed residents back into the devastated areas first into the less-damaged part closest to downtown, east of the railroad tracks, and later into the western end. They were told to retrieve valuables, keepsakes and medicine if their houses were still standing, but not to stay long. "Really, the emergency is over," said Duane Hoeschen, regional coordinator for the state's Division of Emergency Management. "We are now in the recovery. Be very, very careful.

We don't want to kill more people than the tornado did." 'We'd have been killed" Eldora and Omer Pederson, 73 and 80, huddled in their basement when the tornado hit shortly after 6 p.m. Tuesday. But they didn't take refuge under the basement stairs. "We'd have been killed," Eldora Pederson said Wednesday, glancing at the stairs, which had been ripped out and lay on the basement floor. The stairs, foundation and concrete steps outside were about all that was left of the house where the retired dairy farmers had lived tfor nearly 20 years.

"Nothing from the upstairs went down to the basement," Eldora said. "It just went." The Pedersons said they saw the funnel coming, bobbing up and dipping down, and heard the roar. She suffered a bump and he suffered a gash when some of the foundation's concrete blocks dropped on them. City officials urged residents to help others recover personal belongings that were blown about town. A lost-and-found center will open today in the elementary school gym.

By Wednesday afternoon, local, state and federal officials were canvassing the damaged area to estimate the losses as a step toward getting federal assistance, and to determine which houses residents could enter. Over the next day or so, a notice will be placed on each house telling residents if it is habitable, must be repaired before they move back or is too dangerous to enter. Glut of volunteers Volunteers were beginning to swarm into Granite Falls, which is about 125 miles west of the Twin Cities in Yellow Medicine County, but there wasn't much for them to do. Officials suggested volunteers wait a day or two, when residents can begin the recovery effort in earnest. "We had time to prepare for the flood we saw that one coming.

This tornado, we had almost no warning," Smiglewski told residents jammed into a 7 a qp. emergency City Council Star Tribune photo by Brian Peterson A home's interior was exposed when the roof was ripped off In Granite Falls. Inside, much was untouched; a lamp still sat on a table, for Instance. aid package like the one that helped fill gaps between insurance and other government help after tornadoes in St. Peter and Comfreyinl998.

Staff writer Warren Wolfe can be reached via e-mail at wolfe9startribune.com. Sen. Paul Wellstone, and state legislators who toured the area said they would do everything they could to expedite state and federal disaster relief. Sen. Rod Grams, is expected to visit this weekend.

Sen. Dean Johnson, DFL-Willmar, said the state, should fashion an 1 1 1 1.