Ashley Miller said she was planting flowers in her backyard last Friday afternoon when the tornado warning sirens went off.
She dashed inside her house and down to the basement to shelter from the tornado with her mother and their pets. The nearing twister sounded like a train rushing past. And Miller said it felt like all the air was being sucked out of her house. She described feeling like she was on “the UFO fair ride, you know, the little one that goes in circles, and you’re just like, against the wall.”
Miller, 40, starts tearing up standing in front of her home in Marion Township on the southeastern edge of Rochester, recalling those moments.
“You just hold yourself,” Miller said. “You don’t really know what’s going on around you. And you come out your front door and your neighbors’ houses are just gone. You feel guilty and grateful at the same time. It’s hard to explain.”
Olmsted County Sheriff Kevin Torgerson said 60 to 70 structures were damaged or destroyed as at least five tornadoes swept through parts of Marion Township and neighboring Stewartville, and elsewhere in southeastern Minnesota Friday afternoon.
Torgerson told MPR’s Nina Moini Monday that since the twisters barreled through, the county has identified two people with injuries. They were living in a trailer home that sustained significant damage, but Torgerson said the injuries don’t seem serious, something he said is incredible given the scope and scale of the damage.
“With what we had, with homes that are completely destroyed, roofs pulled off, sides of houses, windows exploding all over the place, [it’s] just remarkable,” Torgerson said. “When you drive through those neighborhoods, you just can’t believe that nobody got hurt.”
But the property damage is substantial and some families are reeling from the devastation as they assess the damage and take on the daunting task of cleaning up. The buzz of chain saws can be heard almost constantly as hundreds of downed trees lay scattered about as if they were small sticks thrown about. Clean up crews have tried to organize piles of debris that include mangled metal siding, shredded chunks of sheds, and ripped off roofing.
Dennis Miller (no relation to Ashely Miller) was with his family at his cabin Friday afternoon when they began getting calls from friends about the tornado. They rushed down to find their home almost completely demolished — roof ripped off, windows broken, sideboard peeling.
Asked how he was feeling as he looked over what’s left of his home, Miller said he’s "depressed,” and he then broke down into tears. “It’s very hard,” he added.
Torgerson said insurance should cover most of the property damage, but he has concerns about how long it’ll take to assess all the damage and then rebuild.
“[There’s a huge] amount of construction going on in our area, here in the Rochester and the Olmsted County area — all the construction companies are super busy,” Torgerson explained. “So it’s just another factor that we have to deal with. The competition [timeline] for getting that work done is going to be tremendous.”
Torgerson says the Red Cross and other disaster recovery groups are stepping in to help alongside county and state emergency response agencies, but he says he’s touched by the outpouring of community support as neighbors are helping neighbors.
Caroline Dahley said that her friends came over to help put tarp over top of her house after the twister ripped the roof off. They weren’t able to leave the house afterwards because her husband is on oxygen, so neighbors brought over a generator for his breathing machine since the electricity was out.
A group of about 30 volunteers came from a nearby church Saturday to help out. Toppers donated pizza. Ashley Miller set up an impromptu donation center in front of her house. She’s filled a long table with all sorts of snacks and drinks for people to take — even hot coffee.
She’s arranged picnic tables in her yard so that volunteers and cleaning crews can sit down to rest and eat after long days.
Rose Scrabeck, 72, has been helping out Ashley since Friday — the neighbors had never met until this weekend.
She said it’s been heartwarming to see all the support their community has received from complete strangers.
“We’re a tight community here, and everybody, you know, we’re not nosy, but everybody watches out for everybody, and we take care of each other. There’s a lot of humanity left in this world.”
