River Ramblings.....

    The incredible picture of the tornado on the front page of this week’s paper still brings chills to me. The July 25, 2000 tornado damaged nearly 300 homes and destroying 67 of them in western Granite Falls. It left many of us casting a wary eye toward the sky at the slightest hint of stormy weather.
    The Weather Service determined that the tornado rated F-4 on the Fajita scale in magnitude. Wind speed in the tornado was determined to have been in the neighborhood of 210 mph. The Fajita Scale in use at the time determined an F-4 tornado to have between 208 to 260 mph winds. This was seven years before the before the newer Enhanced Fajita (EF) scale came into use. That scale takes other factors into consideration but even at that, the tornado in Granite Falls that day rated four on the newer EF scale.
    For those of us who, from across town watched the tornado hit, there was more damage than any of us could have imagined. The folks who were at ground zero in their basements as their homes were getting battered and destroyed didn’t see the tornado but felt its full fury and were left to deal with the horrible damage and heartbreaking loss. Arly Swanson lost his life that day and many of us lost our trust in the weather that day, as well. 
    We told them that each and every person was important to this community and that the community would do what ever it could do to help them. We needed them to stay, we needed them to rebuild. The clean-up efforts that ensued and the rebuilding on the west end of town were incredible to watch and quickly made the memories of that tornado fade as folks started anew. They rebuilt their homes and their neighborhoods.
    A year later, a large community picnic was held on the lawn at Minnesota West Community and Technical College. That served to commemorate the event. So much had happened during that year that we all needed some time for some fellowship and a bit of celebration.
    In the years since, there have been no other observances of that painful anniversary. Folks have chosen to move on with life and to tuck those memories away. 
    Still, it was one of the most remarkable events in the history of our area. It has already been ten years. It was incredible then and is still incredible now.    

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    Each week our office  receives several area newspapers and a few from out of our area, as well. I page through them and try to find stories that somehow relate to an issue or idea that might be happening in our area and that our readers might find useful or interesting. We often include those items in the Area News column on our Region page.
    The Paynesville Press last week featured nearly two and one half pages of legal notices. While I often read the small print of those legal notices it is usually only the local notices that get my attention. These, however, looked  unusual. They were nearly all the same in length and appearance. A closer look revealed that there were all mortgage foreclosures, a whopping total of 26 of them. It was hard to tell how many of them were in and around Paynesville but from the property descriptions they all seemed to be in Stearns county. That’s a remarkable number of property owners who are having a hard time making their mortgage payments on time. It tells you plenty about how things are going for some folks.

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    Monday night’s Granite Falls city council meeting was the shortest that any of us can remember- a whopping 38 minutes from start to finish. The most significant thing that we did was move forward by calling for bids for the reconstruction of the levee behind the fire hall and, to the west, a portion of the levee that also serves as a road known as the Dike Road.
    Improving and raising that levee  has long been a big part of our flood protection plan. Without the levee, more then 200 homes and several businesses and a church would have been inundated by the flood waters of the Minnesota River. Without the levee, the community would have suffered some very significant losses with some of it in the same area that the July 25 tornado caused so much devastation.
    We can’t stop the river from flowing downstream but we can minimize any loss by moving what all is in harms way and what can be protected at a reasonable price.