Tornado 20 year anniversary

St. Peter Herald and Le Center Leader

20 Years Later

March 29, 1998 Tornado Reflection and Recovery

March 21/22, 2018

PAGE 2

20 YEAR TORNADO

COMMEMORATING THE

Thursday, March 22, 2018

20th Anniversary OF THE SAINT PETER TORNADO

Twist of Fate THURSDAY, MARCH 29 | 5:15–6:15 P.M. SAINT PETER HIGH SCHOOL THEATER A time for reflection as we commemorate the 1998 tornado. The program will honor the losses, while also celebrating the resiliency of the community over the last 20 years turning this tragedy to opportunity and the heroic efforts of the community to build a stronger Saint Peter. Hosted by veteran WCCO news anchor Don Shelby.

StPeterChamber.com/tornado Sponsored by the City of Saint Peter, Saint Peter Chamber of Commerce, Saint Peter School District, Nicollet County Historical Society, Nicollet County, and Gustavus Adolphus College.

Thursday, March 22, 2018

20 YEAR TORNADO

PAGE 3

INSIDE TORNADO STORIES FROM ...

This shows the destruction of the windows and structure of Central Community Center. (Courtesy Nicollet County Historial Society)

Tornado commemoration to be held March 29

By NANCY MADSEN

nmadsen@stpeterherald.com

Residents will have the chance to learn about and remember the 1998 tornado on March 29.

Echoing a book compiled by St. Peter Kiwanis Club in the same year, the commemoration is called “Twist of Fate.”

Nicollet County Historical Society, Nicollet County, St. Peter Public Schools, city of St. Peter, St. Peter Area Chamber of Commerce and Gustavus Adolphus College are hosting the event. It will begin at 5:15 p.m. at the St. Peter High School Auditorium and is expected to last about an

hour.

“It is about rebuilding and resiliency,” said Jessica Becker, director of the historical society.

Before it begins, there will be a slideshow of contributed photographs. The ceremony will be emceed by veteran news anchor Don Shelby.

It will begin with a recap of what happened. There will be a moment of silence at 5:29 p.m.

After, the focus will turn to rebuilding and everything since, Becker said.

A primary focus is to once again thank volunteers.

“It’s important to thank all the people who helped,” City Admin-

istrator Todd Prafke said.

And there were thousands.

The people who helped are too numerous to name. In addition to the ceremony, the organizers hung a banner over Hwy. 169 in downtown St. Peter.

The commemoration will conclude with a piece from the St. Peter High School choir. There will be a reception with light refreshments afterward.

Becker said it will be educational for those who didn’t live in St. Peter during the tornado but it is really designed for those who were here or helped in the aftermath.

“This event is about getting ev-

eryone together who experienced it in a room and saying, ‘Thank you,’” she said.

For years, visitors and newcomers could tell there wasn’t something quite right as trees grew back and other scars were covered.

“This is a really important chapter in a really big book,” Prafke said. “There are lots of things before and great things after. This is maybe closing that chapter.”

Reach Associate Editor Nancy Madsen at 507-931-8568 or follow her on Twitter.com @ SPHnancy.

20 Years Later: Reflection and Recovery on the 1998 Tornado A St. Peter Herald Special Section 311 S. Minnesota Ave. St. Peter, MN 56082 507-931-4520 www.stpeterherald.com ©2018 Regional General Manager: Chad Hjellming Regional Managing Editor: Dana Melius Associate Editor: Nancy Madsen Stories and Photos: Nancy Madsen, Pat Beck, Ed Lee, Nicollet County Historical Society Cover Design and Page Layout: Nick Gerhardt and Pat Beck Ad Design: Mary Jo Blanchard

Le Center, Page 5 Gustavus Adolphus College, Pages 10, 14 City of St. Peter, Pages 4, 8 Nicollet County, Pages 11, 12, 13, 15 St. Peter Public Schools, Pages 6-7 Long-term benefits from the tornado, Pages 16-18 Aerial views of the tornado destruction, Page 19 Rebuilding St. Peter Schools, Page 21 Personal stories from ...

Marit and John Kvamme, Page 4 Columns from ...

Pat Beck, Page 20 Ed Lee, Page 22 Captions for the cover photos: Top left, an aerial photo shows the destruction on the campus of Gustavus Adolphus College soon after the March 29, 1998 tornado. (Courtesy Nicollet County Historical Society) (Top right) The Church of St. Peter was destroyed in the tornado. It was at Mulberry and Fifth Street.

(Bottom left) Nicollet County Facilities Director Douglas Krueger, left, talks with Larry Luchias, project manager with Robert Carlstrom Co. in September 1998 while the courthouse was being rebuilt. (Herald file photo) (Bottom right) The St. Peter Community Center and Public Library was built on the site of the Catholic church. (Herald file photo)

PAGE 4

20 YEAR TORNADO

Thursday, March 22, 2018

Marit and John Kvamme sit in their living room. A tree fell through one of the room’s windows during the 1998 tornado.

The house had other damage and it was a long two years until all the work was complete. (Nancy Madsen/St. Peter Herald)

Tornado destroyed, imprinted history on St. Peter

By NANCY MADSEN

nmadsen@stpeterherald.com

M

arit and John Kvamme waited in their basem e nt w i t h t h e i r youngest child for the March 29, 1998 tornado to pass.

“All we could hear was glass being broken into smaller and smaller pieces,” he said.

That day, a Sunday, had been unseasonably warm. They had picked up trash so frequently dropped on their property at the corner of Washington Avenue and Grace Street by passing students.

They heard news of a large storm approaching. But John Kvamme was disbelieving as he stood in their backyard.

“There was no wind,” he said.

“How can there be a tornado without any wind?”

Then tree branches “fluttered,” he said, and he went into the basement.

Their house survived, as did the one to the south, but few other buildings within a block did. They could see the destroyed former Central School, then a community center, and then the Arts and Heritage Center from their front steps if they looked a little left. They could see the annihilated Church of St. Peter and destroyed sanctuary of St. Peter Lutheran Church if they looked to the right.

Their house had a little roof damage; all but one window was gone. A Norway spruce had fallen from the neighbor’s property through most of their living room. That room “smelled like Christmas,” Marit said. The rest of the house had “the tornado smell,” a mix of damp basement and soil. There was dirt and debris everywhere.

When they had taken stock of things, John recalled he deadpanned, “That new garage you wanted — you got it.”

Crews remove downed trees from the Kvammes’ garage, which was destroyed. (Submitted photo)

Not knowing what else to do, they sat in the kitchen and ate from the fridge. There was no power, no phone lines and the roads were clogged with trees.

Before dark, John tried to cover the hole in the roof with a kiddie pool. Their daughter had run a mile home and the four of them slept in the one room that had a window.

From there, the Kvammes and the whole of St. Peter began a long road to recovery and rebuilding.

“It took two years out of our lives,” Marit said. “And it was just like that for the city.”

A remarkable storm

The tornado was, in fact, one of 16 in Minnesota and Wisconsin that was spawned by one su-

percell thunderstorm.

The tornadoes killed two people: 85-year-old Louis Mosenden, whose house collapsed on top of him in rural Hanska, and 6-year-old Dustin Schneider, who was pulled from a car on a township road west of St. Peter. His parents, Steve Schneider and Diana Swann, were two of the 21 injured.

St. Peter residents faced the loss of 200 homes, while 400 had structural damage and 1,200 more had some damage.

In Nicollet County, at least 60 farms were damaged. Throughout the city, more than 17,000 trees were lost.

One was rated F4; it struck and decimated Comfrey. The one that left a path of destruction in St. Peter was an F3. A third was rated F2 and hit Le Center. Those three made up the bulk of $235 million in damage from the storm.

The tornado that hit St. Peter

traveled along the ground for 67 miles, the longest path recorded.

A quick response

Three days after the tornado, city Public Works Director Lewis Giesking was forced to take a lunch break by his wife, Barb.

Giesking, more than a dozen years into the post, had been holed up in the Emergency Operations Center. “She said, ‘You’ve got to go out and see everything that’s going on,’” he said. “She drove me around and I literally cried. I couldn’t believe all the damage. It really hit me what we had to do.”

Just before the tornado hit, he had been standing in his backyard on Eighth Street watching the skies.

“I heard a sound like bowling balls in the skies,” which turned out to be grapefruitsized hail on the north side, he

See ST. PETER on 8

Thursday, March 22, 2018

20 YEAR TORNADO

Retired Le Center businessman Gary Factor was the city’s mayor at the time of the 1998 tornado. His building on the southwest side of Le Center was destroyed. In the background is the trailer court that sustained terrible damage. (Dana Melius/St. Peter Herald)

PAGE 5

Ann Traxler, now Director of Le Sueur County Emergency Management Services, was a volunteer coordinator at the time of the 1998 tornado. She was director in 2006 after another tornado hit the city. (Dana Melius/St. Peter Herald)

Le Center: City hit by 1998 tornado, responded with aid, volunteers

By DANA MELIUS

hit the industrial park, the 4-H building, and the mobile home park. From the trailer park, 42 he 1998 tornado, families were displaced into the which first devastated high school (in Le Center) for the communities of shelter.”

Comfrey and St. Peter as it moved east, also caused sig- Quick response nificant damage on Le Center’s Power crews were on the south side. scene quickly, but it would be But while the Le Sueur hours before portions of the County community is often city had electricity restored. left behind when “the 1998 tor- The Le Center Fire Departnado” again makes headlines, ment had been alerted just as Ann Traxler and Gary Factor are the winds hit, originally called among Le Center residents who out to announce the tornado remember it well. warning due to the failed si“It was my daughter’s 13th ren. birthday and we had a houseRemarkably, only minor hold full of people,” Traxler injuries were sustained to resisaid. But as the sky darkened dents of the trailer park. to an eerie green and the wind “It was like a bomb went off momentarily subsided, destruc- in the trailer court,” Traxler said. tion followed. The tornado Traxler, now the Le Sueur roared down Hwy. 99 into Le County Director of EmergenCenter. cy Management Services, was Police Chief Bob Pfarr said a volunteer coordinator at the at the time that it was like time time. When the tornado hit, she stood still. was summoned by then Chief “The clocks stopped at quar- Deputy David Gliszinski, now ter to six,” he told Le Center a Le Sueur County commisLeader staff writer Mark Davis sioner, to assist anywhere she for the April 1, 1998 special edi- could. tion of the newspaper. “That’s “About eight months later, I when we lost power. We just had was done,” Traxler recalls. “We a blip of the siren and then the had a lot to do and I helped put siren was out.” it to bed.”

From that 1998 report, DaPutting to bed the remnants vis wrote of the disaster that hit of a tornado is no simple task. the city: But the cooperation of emergen“It only took five minutes cy departments from Le Cenon March 29 for the tornado to ter and regional squads, along dmelius@stpeterherald.com

T

with the work of hundreds of volunteers fueled Traxler, as her hometown went to work.

“And it’s become my passion,” Traxler said.

She was brought into the Le Sueur County Emergency Management Services team, and after helping spearhead efforts again in a 2006 tornado that hit Le Center, Traxler was named EMS director.

A dark city

Factor was Le Center mayor at the time and owner of Factor Motors, which was located on the city’s southwest side along Hwy. 99. But he was in northern Minnesota, towing his insurance agent’s car back to Le Center. Twenty years later, Factor hadn’t lost the irony of that tow.

“He was kept pretty darn busy for quite a while,” Factor said during a recent interview.

But on March 29, 1998, Factor vividly recalls the darkness as he drove into Le Center over an hour after the tornado hit. Roads were blocked. Debris was scattered throughout the city.

“The lack of power in town was extremely eerie,” he said.

“And everybody was outside wondering what to do. It was rather strange.”

But there was also an immediate sense came daybreak that it could have so much worse,

Factor said, particularly when word surfaced about the damage sustained in Comfrey and St. Peter.

“The news could have been much worse,” Factor said. “Sheet metal and buildings can be replaced. The lives can’t be. We were very fortunate.”

Rebuilding efforts in Le Center were boosted by a huge influx of federal dollars, upwards of $600,000, according to Factor.

The former mayor also said the federal assistance prompted city officials and business leaders to establish an active Economic Development Authority and revolving loan fund to assist in the rebuilding efforts and redevelop a new industrial site in the community’s southwest corner.

“The devastation and the industrial park damage was pretty nasty,” Factor said.

So, despite the damage, just as in Comfrey and St. Peter, there was some good which came about due to the tornado, he noted.

“The tornado taught us a lot of things, how to do things in the future,” Factor said. “There’s no doubt that because of the (1998) tornado, we were better prepared to handle things in 2006.”

Factor also joked that it’s OK that Le Center isn’t always mentioned when talk surfaces about the ‘98 tornado, with St. Peter often getting the attention due

to the extreme damages there.

He saw it, as well.

“We’re kind of a sleepy little town here,” he said with a smile.

“When you’re in the news, it’s not always good. Sometimes no news is good news.”

A wealth of volunteers

of Le Center, insulation and Styrofoam piled outside the school was picked up and scattered through the community.

“When you first looked at it, it looked worse than it was,” Traxler said.

As Traxler continues in her emergency management services position, she’s collected both expertise and equipment to make disaster relief efforts big and small more efficient.

A brand new mobile unit, free to Le Sueur County via excess equipment from the federal Homeland Security, sits in the ambulance shed.

But not all change is good, she noted. While social media can provide immediate assistance during a disaster, workers must also keep an eye out for erroneous information and “fake news.” And among Traxler’s new volunteers are those training in social media.

“We have a team now for social media (information),” she said. But with that immediacy comes a caution to get the correct information in the hands of those who need help.

“I think that’s going to be the hardest thing,” Traxler said.

“You just want to give people everything you can and get people safe.”

Traxler remains committed to the emergency management field. She, too, agrees that with each disaster comes a time to assess what went well and what could be improved.

And she’s always proud of how Le Center residents rise up in times of need.

From Traxler’s tiny office housed in the Le Center Ambulance Service building, she keeps pictures and records of the ‘98 tornado. Included is an itemized running total of daily volunteer hours logged by residents of Le Center and other Le Sueur County disaster relief volunteers.

Between when the tornado hit and April 24, when the bulk of the first wave of clean-up efforts was completed, Traxler documented a total of 8,997 volunteers who totaled 68,980 hours of service.

“The outpouring of support is so amazing and overwhelming,” she said.

Traxler said many volunteers Reach Dana Melius at 507worked throughout the nearby townships, cleaning debris scat- 931-8567. tered in farm fields. In the city

PAGE 6

20 YEAR TORNADO

Thursday, March 22, 2018

ST. PETER PUBLIC SCHOOLS

t eter blic chools h stled to nish 98 school year

By NANCY MADSEN

nmadsen@stpeterherald.com

I

n the wake of the tornado, the city and St. Peter Public Schools worked quickly to get people back to class.

Most of the $5 million damage for the school district was at the middle school/high school, which could not be used.

The chimney had collapsed through the music area into the girls’ locker room below.

The concession stand at the football stadium had been the culprit, blowing from the hill across and catching the chimney.

“The rooms were a total loss,” Jim Siewert, retired band teacher, said. The most debris was at the back of the room,

where the large instruments were.

“The tuba was like a pancake,” Siewert said.

The large instruments were destroyed. But they were all school property that insurance promptly replaced. The dramatic change in pressure pushed the instrument cases open and filled them with shards, all while the clasps stayed closed. They were all sent off for cleaning.

The music library, on the opposite side of a gaping hole from the room’s door, filled 10 to 12 filing cabinets. Siewert said insurance had contractors build a temporary walkway to retrieve the filing cabinets. The music library escaped relatively unharmed.

Split schedules

and later superintendent of St. Peter Public Schools, was with Superintendent Gil Carlson and other district leaders at an Olson accreditation conference in Chicago. They scrambled to get back early Monday.

The other schools, South Elementary and North Intermediate, were relatively unscathed. For the rest of the school year, all the middle and high school students also went to class at those schools.

They used other districts’ athletic facilities and made do for Jim Siewert, then band teacher for St. Peter Public Schools, picks through the debris in the everything from science labs high school band room. The roof had collapsed under the weight of the school’s chimney.

Jeff Olson, then principal

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Behind him is open to the sky. (Submitted photo)

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Schools: St. Peter Schools rushed to finish up school year following the destruction left by tornado From Page 6 to community and technical education.

The CTE classes made storage sheds, which it auctioned off at the end of the year. It filled a need because so many in St. Peter had lost their houses, garages and sheds.

Typically, school leaders spend two to three months developing a master schedule.

“We revamped the master schedule in three and a half days,” Olson said. “The teachers and staff were great.”

Split days at North and South Elementary soon followed. Kindergarten through sixth-grade students attended class in the morning; grades seven through nine went to South Elementary and grades 10-12 went to North Intermediate during the afternoon.

“It was best for the youngest to be in school first,” Olson said.

The high school students wore shirts that said, “Blown away …

all the way back to elementary school.” They folded into the smaller desks at the elementary and middle school. Many exchanged notes with the younger students whose desks they borrowed.

Staff, student stress

Olson said it was challenging. Many teachers were dealing with their own stress of damage at home, as he was. He and his wife, a fifth-grade teacher, had to move out of their house.

Teachers and staff tried to support students who struggled through the loss.

“The kids that came to school were very disturbed about the experience, the younger ones especially,” Siewert said.

The staff and students got tired of bologna or ham sandwiches everyday, but the district didn’t have the facilities to do anything else.

Neig hb ors and f r iends would invite those over who had lost a roof or a house for

a meal and an opportunity to do laundry.

“In a way, you’re stronger and have more a sense of community after you go through that as a group,” Siewert said. “The churches and schools were all a part of that.”

In the schools’ split schedule, the students switched at lunch.

The older students waited outside until a signal was given after all the elementary students had left. Olson said that at the end of the year, they gave the older grades a few “normal” days in the schools by themselves. Before the first one, the students waited outside while school leaders wondered where they were.

Olson said it was important to maintain the educational rigor.

“We wanted to make sure we offered the best possible education,” he said.

Maybe the teachers didn’t quite press as hard. We “tried not to cram too much in,” Siewert said. “We did our concerts and

graduation.”

A sense of normalcy

For the high school students, it was important to have as normal an experience as possible for prom and graduation, Olson said. Prom was held in Mankato.

Graduation was held in a patched middle school/high school gymnasium.

“Particularly for our seniors, it brought closure to their high school experience in the building their academic career was supposed to end in,” Olson said. “It happened in some sort of normal fashion.”

Meanwhile, Carlson worked on finding a way to rebuild. They patched together insurance proceeds and aid from FEMA and the state Legislature to repair and renovate the middle school/high school.

At the high school, administrators had just shown school board members the problems in the 40-year old high school.

“We had plumbing issues,

The bleachers and press box at the football field were destroyed in the tornado. (Herald file photo)

parking lot issues,” Olson said.

“The track needed to be redone.

At the end of the day, they were all addressed.”

Businesses and the Minnesota Twins donated trees. People from near and far sent donations to the school district.

“Gil Carlson, the way he could see things and pull people together

was so important,” Olson said.

“Todd Prafke was a ball of energy and everybody pulled together. That made it, if not enjoyable, tolerable.

And the kids did a remarkable job.”

Reach Associate Editor Nancy Madsen at 507-931-8568 or follow her on Twitter.com @ SPHnancy.

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PAGE 8

20 YEAR TORNADO

Thursday, March 22, 2018

St.Peter: Community experiences marathon recovery after destruction left by 1998 tornado From Page 4 said. “Just before it hit, a thin layer of fog formed across the yard. It was really weird.”

That first night, they focused on clearing the main arteries so traffic could move. The Public Works building and equipment were not harmed, which let crews get right to work. Giesking picked his way downtown to City Hall.

City Administrator Todd Prafke quickly decided that working in the Nicollet County Emergency Operations Center would be better than City Hall. While Nicollet County had lost the tower and a major section of the original courthouse, the basement Emergency Operations Center was intact. City Hall, meanwhile, had lost roofing. Prafke saw the advantage of close quarters with other agencies and the plethora of telephone lines.

County Deputy Emergency Management Coordinator Chris Wersal got the EOC up and running the night of the tornado.

She managed information flow through succinct briefings. In between, leaders addressed problems that arose and planned one or two days out to tackle the major issues.

“It was a way to divide and conquer the response,” Prafke said.

Law enforcement and first responders from the region came immediately. State and nonprofit agencies, led by the Red Cross and Salvation Army, weren’t far behind.

Prafke said so many outside agencies and individuals were helpful. He rattled off Minnesota Emergency Management, Department of Trade and Economic Development and Mankato, who lent Public Safety Director Jim Franklin, who had been the state director of emergency management services.

By the end of the first week, volunteers poured into St. Peter.

The count ended up being more than 10,000. The city rented buses and had two stations to load volunteers from out of town on the buses: the Treaty Site History Center and Jefferson Park.

From there, the buses went on

prescribed routes through town.

Prafke had special praise for Giesking.

“The mastermind of the cleanup was Lew,” Prafke said. “He was just a beast.”

Giesking credited the crews and the help from other cities and utilities. St. Peter’s street and electric crews turned into foremen for the visiting crews.

“By Friday late afternoon, we had all the streets passable,” Giesking said. “I remember that FEMA inspectors who had gone to a tornado in Alabama couldn’t believe that we could respond that quickly. Down there, it took several weeks.”

Crews continued to help property owners by hauling away debris for weeks. They would sweep across the city in an organized fashion. Property owners would drag debris to the curb. Once equipment took the big stuff, volunteers would follow, throwing smaller pieces into trucks to move away.

Where the wastewater plant now sits on St. Julien Street became the yard waste site. The old airport property, where River’s Edge Hospital is now, hosted the materials to be sorted for recycling. Damaged cars went to the Nicollet County Fairgrounds.

That quick and effective organization held true for the other Public Works operations: water and wastewater, electric and parks. Work was pretty limited to daylight hours, but temporary power lines were raised across the city in two weeks.

Marathon of recovery

One City Council decision that Giesking had pressed for helped that re-electrifying. A new substation had just been built at the Sunrise Drive water tower site.

The council had spent extra money to storm-proof the building.

Because of that, it was energized within a week of the tornado.

“The tendency too often is to save as much money as you can, but there are times you really need to be spending money to be prepared for the worst-case scenarios,” Giesking said.

Emergency response is a sprint, recovery is a marathon,

Prafke said.

“One of the smart things we did was we sent employees home in the first week,” he said.

The 48 city employees that had their own damage to deal with were told to stay away.

City staff, beginning with Prafke, took advantage of counseling through Lutheran Social Services.

“I was the first one for a lot of reasons,” he said. “And then I took her around and she met every employee of the city.”

Although those were not visible to the public, they were vital to the health and morale of city staff.

Prafke was still new in his role.

He had started Dec. 2.

He and his family were renting a home near Jefferson Park. They were scheduled to close on a home on Riggs Road in April. He, wife Ytive and sons Alec and Payton waited out the storm in a closet in a basement bedroom.

Their rental home had little damage, but the neighbor’s garage was flipped into the neighbor’s yard and house across the street.

Prafke’s city pager went off. He drove to City Hall, meandering around trees.

“There were small rocks everywhere,” Prafke said. “They were the ballast for the roof here and the phone company building.

They were all over.”

In the initial aftermath, the city had lost power. Over the following days, portable lighting was brought in, supplied by generators. But, for the most part, “it was pitch black,” Prafke said.

Prafke mentioned some personal blessings. His car, a red Honda CR-V, had deep water in the floorboards. The car’s computer was on the passenger side and shorted. But Lager’s service manager came to the house and took care of the car.

And Ytive moved all their earthly belongings on her own in their Dodge Caravan after they bought a house, a hard and lonely task that still makes Prafke choke up.

Gorman Park is pictured here after the tornado from Grace Street looking south. The Church of St. Peter, known for its stained glass, was destroyed. It’s the building in the background. (Courtesy of Nicollet County Historical Society)

St. Peter response. One, Prafke said, is to ensure the parties share common language. For example, to locals, a 50-space parking lot is a big lot; it may not be for visitors.

One that took a day or two to figure out was how to interface well with aid organizations, such as the Red Cross. Prafke realized these organizations needed one person as a point of contact who could make it a responsibility how to connect people with a need to the organization that could help.

“People really stepped to the plate and did fantastic things,” Prafke said.

Prafke said FEMA worked differently then. They arrived well after the recovery had begun. They provided assistance through the Small Business Administration for home rebuilding. It was much later when the trailers arrived.

“It wasn’t FEMA’s job to direct the response,” Prafke said. “They were to be a resource in that and we treated them as such.”

The city made a decision to put its rebuilding behind that of St. Peter Public Schools. Getting the school infrastructure usable first was important for the comLessons for emergencies munity. Prafke said that fit with For emergency managers, their “people first” mantra in the there are lots of lessons in the storm response.

After the tornado, some city leaders were concerned that residents would just take their insurance checks and go somewhere else.

“But people were invested here,” Prafke said. “For lots of reasons, people stayed in spite of the tornado.”

In fact, the city grew 2 percent three years after the tornado.

Those who stayed

left for a meal and the days stayed long, hard and busy.

The two children still at home — one was already in college — lived with friends outside the city. But they wouldn’t let the mothers in their host families wash their clothes. So Marit would meet them to pick up and deliver laundry. John and Marit moved around several times.

They found some damage so odd. There was a 2-by-12 stuck in between the floors of their house “like a diving board,” John Kvamme said. “It stuck out 10 feet. The contractors struggled to pry it out but they eventually just cut it off at the surface of the house.”

Their living room shelves were lined with Department 56 figurines. They were not broken or moved. But there was dirt in between the pages of the books behind them.

The Kvammes bought a copy of “Twist of Fate,” a book compiled in 1998 by the St. Peter Kiwanis Club about experiences of St. Peter residents.

“I cannot get past the first page,” John said.

The Kvammes said they knew people who moved after the tornado. It was emotionally and physically exhausting for them, but they rebuilt.

Their area was among the last to get power. They waited for a while before doing anything, then decided to catalog their losses and start packing the salvageable household goods. Those went into storage. Upholstered furniture, carpet, drapes couldn’t be kept.

Family and friends came and helped them clean and pack up.

Insurance wanted the Social Security numbers of anyone who went inside the house. The Kvammes collected 50. Volunteers helped outside by picking up yard debris, but they had to Reach Associate Editor Nancy keep a close eye on them to make sure things they wanted weren’t Madsen at 507-931-8568 or follow her on Twitter.com @ tossed.

Marit said they almost never SPHnancy.

Thursday, March 22, 2018

20 YEAR TORNADO

PAGE 9

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PAGE 10

20 YEAR TORNADO

Thursday, March 22, 2018

GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS COLLEGE

Ken Westphal, left, retired vice president of finance, and Steve Kjellgren, associate vice president of auxiliary services, sit in the Jackson Campus Center, which was built after the 1998 tornado damaged the old dining hall along with many other buildings on campus. (Dana Melius/St. Peter Herald)

Gustavus rebuilt from destruction

By NANCY MADSEN

nmadsen@stpeterherald.com

R

ebuilding a Greater Gustavus” was emblazoned on T-shirts all over campus after the

tornado.

Gustavus Adolphus College took the brunt of the fury of the storm. Nearly half — 33 of 78 — of the classrooms were unusable.

Nearly every tree was blown down or severely damaged.

Nearly every window blown out.

But most people who worked there at the time say they are first thankful that few were on campus. Students were on spring break. Because it was Sunday evening, few staff were around.

Administrators were concerned that students wouldn’t come back after they reopened or in the fall. They took an aggressive approach to getting students back quickly, rebuilding facilities and improving them

in the year or two that followed.

“If it were not for the leadership team in place at the time, the story would’ve been much different,”said Steve Kjellgren, who was director of dining services and is now associate vice president of auxiliary services.

‘Nothing was where it should be’

He remembers the day of the tornado as unseasonably warm.

They had held a birthday barbecue for his youngest child, who turned six years old. His wife, Julie, had left for her evening shift as a nurse in Mankato, so he was alone with their three children Matthew, Bethany and Grace.

When they sought cover, one of his children’s friends from the north side, a boy, was with them.

Kjellgren took them, with a bag of lemon drops, into the basement. They hid under the stairwell.

A f t e r the tornado passed, Kjellgren surveyed the damage.

Windows were broken; a car hood was leaning Wunderlich against the front door of his house; the garage door was on top of the family car.

“It seemed like nothing was where it should be,” he said. “It didn’t quite register what had happened.”

It was the next day before they reconnected the boy with his grandparents.

On the first night, college Physical Plant Director Warren Wunderlich and Vice President of Finance Ken Westphal made their way to campus by mountain bike and on foot, respectively. Both had damage at their homes.

Wunderlich began a tour of all of the buildings, checking for damage and signs of being unsound structurally.

“There wasn’t a lot we could do for the first few days after the sun went down,” Wunderlich said. “But that first night, I walked through pretty much every building and touched every floor on campus.”

He immediately had calls from contractors and others just showed up the following morning.

Lund Center needed some structural work, but was more or less usable. About half the classrooms were unusable. And 50bed dormitory Johnson Hall, the third-oldest building on campus, needed to be demolished.

All told, there was about $60 million in damage on campus.

Westphal had just returned from a cherry blossom-festooned Washington, D.C. He said the difference was stark.

He walked to the administrative building and began to pull out his keys, when he saw the glass doors had been blown out, so he walked right through. The phone lines had a battery backup system, so he was able to call the college’s insurance company.

Around 9 p.m., the college president and senior leaders had their first meeting in the “command center” in offices near the campus safety office.

Aiming for the ‘almost impossible’

They met twice a day for several weeks, the administrators said. On the first morning, college President Axel Steuer wanted to have students back in two weeks. A few said that would be impossible, Wunderlich said, so he relented to three.

“It was almost impossible,” Wunderlich said.

Kjellgren said, “We kind of

looked around and said, ‘Let’s go.’”

Throughout the campus, all of the carpet, upholstered furniture and drapes had to go because of shards of glass, other debris and sometimes water damage.

Kraus-Anderson was the general contractor for renovations; local contractors did a lot of the daily work and the insurance company contracted with a clean up contractor. Two big shredders chewed up all of the downed trees.

Westphal said security teams from Minnesota State University, Mankato, helped campus safety at the three entrances.

They checked every person who came in. Similar colleges: St. Olaf, Luther, Macalester, also sent help for physical plant.

With all of the outside help, everyone’s role changed. Plumb-

See GUSTAVUS on 14

Thursday, March 22, 2018

20 YEAR TORNADO

PAGE 11

NICOLLET COUNTY TORNADO

Nicollet County hosted response planning center, rebuilt courthouse

By NANCY MADSEN

nmadsen@stpeterherald.com

On the evening of the tornado, Facilities Maintenance Director Douglas Krueger had been in St. Peter, eating dinner with his family at Country Kitchen. He was on call and had been told the jail was hot. They came to the jail and he looked west and saw the storm coming. He yelled for his family to run. They ran to the basement.

“The place went berserk,” he said.

A generator turned on, powering half of the courthouse, including the Emergency Operations Center, alarms rang out. He shut them off, then went to check out other parts of the building. In the 1880s courthouse, the damage was severe. The northwest corner of the building had the biggest damage, where the roof and walls had collapsed. The second and third floor were full of debris, Krueger could see. But because of the damage, the sprinkler system had gone off and the floors were flooding. He shut off the sprinklers and took out fuses. Because the building tipped a bit to the east, the water ran along the floors and then down to the next.

In all of that chaos, the front double doors were standing open.

Krueger closed them.

He took the key to the top floors of the tower from the second-floor janitor’s room. It opened a door on the third floor and walked up to the fourth floor.

He could see the northwest corner gone and the sky.

“I didn’t want to lose the key,” he said. He put it in his wallet. It’s still there. “That’s how much this place means to me.”

He said he felt like he was gone three minutes, but it was three hours before he returned to his family in the basement. He got them in the car and drove them home to Cleveland.

Emergency operations

That night, the Emergency Operations Center was up and running, thanks to Chris Wersal, deputy emergency management

Nicollet County Courthouse suffered $3.1 million in damage from the 1998 tornado. The tower was torn apart and the northwest corner had severe damage.

(Submitted photo)

coordinator.

She had been out of town with family and driving back toward St. Peter when her husband, a sheriff ’s deputy, called. He was out weather spotting and saw the storm approaching. He later told her the courthouse’s steeple was gone and told her to drive toward the light sky, south. She went through Madison Lake, Eagle Lake and Mankato before coming onto Hwy. 169. The state trooper at the checkpoint told her, “They need you there.”

She drove home, near the Armory, got a different pair of shoes and came to the courthouse.

She went to the center and

started flipping through the manual. It gave instructions on how to respond to one aspect of emergency management at a time.

“It was a worst-case scenario for everything I had learned in the last year” during her emergency management training, she said.

“I thought, ‘You’re not going to find the answers in a manual.’ so I closed it and put it in the drawer.”

Agencies started showing up and city staff came over with newly printed city maps. Teams of firefighters and gas company fanned out. By 2 a.m., they had checked every city residence twice to ensure people were alive and uninjured.

The Blue Earth County sheriff gave her a ride home around 3 a.m. She could see a police car from Iowa patrolling her street.

“I knew this was so huge,” Wersal said.

The next morning, she was pouring herself a cup of coffee when she saw a disheveled man walking down the hall.

She asked if she could help him. He raised his hands, covered in blood, and said, “I need some boxes to put what we have left in storage.”

She handed him the coffee and called the manager of the UPS store in Mankato, whom she knew, and asked for boxes. He

brought a load that morning. She told the man they would be there by noon.

“I wish to this day that I knew who that man was,” she said.

During those weeks, Wersal saw many of her emergency management classmates and instructors. She felt overwhelmed because “they were coming to help me.”

At the one-year anniversary, Wersal read a list of all the agencies that had helped in the recovery. It took her 10 minutes.

“We are lucky other entities helped us,” retired Nicollet County Administrator Bob Podhradsky said. “They came from North

Mankato, as far away as Chaska.”

But he thought the community’s spirits stayed high and St. Peter would’ve rebuilt regardless.

Wersal recalled the board was nervous that they had lost control of the response early on. So many agencies and resources had poured in.

“Please let them help us,” she said. “You will be informed and in control of what is happening in the county.”

Courthouse damage

Around 7 a.m. the day after the tornado, the county’s

See COUNTY on 12C

PAGE 12

20 YEAR TORNADO

Thursday, March 22, 2018

COUNTY: Nicollet County Courthouse reconstruction cost $3.1 million From Page 11C insurance company was already there. Krueger led them on a tour.

In the basement, the adjusters said, “This is not too bad.”

After the walk through, the insurance company estimated $50,000 in damage. That started nine months of negotiations, Krueger said, but the eventual bill for reconstruction was $3.1 million. Because of the water damage, the building was basically gutted, he said.

Meanwhile, the sheriff ’s building had one broken window.

For days, Krueger worked until 4 or 5 a.m., slept a few hours and started working again. He was short-staffed, as one of his team was activated with the National Guard to help and another had significant property damage.

Podhradsky asked Krueger if the staff from the guardian ad litem office could retrieve belongings.

“That’s when I started saying, ‘Sorry, gentlemen, that’s not going to happen. Next question, please,’”

Krueger said.

When they asked why, he took them to the third floor of the courthouse. The whole guardian Podhradsky ad litem office area was full of stone and brick. Desks had been pounded to just a foot high and filing cabinets had been flattened.

The contractor on the job helped them salvage what they could.

Emergency logistics

The leaders in the center developed the plans for how to handle the 10,000-plus volunteers that came to town, the Salvation Army and Red Cross, and all the groups that just wanted to bring things, everything from little grills to clothing. When word got out that free items were available at the Armory, some from the Twin Nicollet County Facilities Maintenance Director Douglas Krueger, left, and retired Disaster Recovery Coordinator Chris Wersal See COUNTY on 13C joked about being joined at the hip during the tornado recovery and restoration of the county courthouse, which included an

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Thursday, March 22, 2018

20 YEAR TORNADO

PAGE 13

COUNTY: Nicollet County Sheriff Dave Lange: ‘It looked like a battle zone’ From Page 12C Cities came down to take advantage, Wersal said.

They developed a color-coded building safety assessment, a way to keep people out of neighborhoods who weren’t from there and plans for dignitaries that came to town.

At that time, Nicollet County Sheriff David Lange was a police officer in North Mankato. He was one of many regional law enforcement officers who came to St. Peter on the day of the tornado.

“It looked like a battle zone,” he said. “All the trees were down and clean up was an ongoing thing for weeks to come.”

Many of the top leaders were in the center, directing the cleanup. When he was there, Lange’s job was to guard the door. Only those with proper identification were allowed in.

“When the FEMA director came, he didn’t have ID,” Lange said. “Chris Wersal got that clarified and I let him in.”

The center had 5 p.m. nightly

briefings, short and sweet. Afterward, news media would get information.

“We talked about what we needed to address next,” Podhradsky said. “It was helpful because we knew where everyone was at.”

Wersal said the job of the leaders was to tackle the next need and plan one, two or three days out.

For the first two weeks, Podhradsky said few people got any rest. It was four days before he had a chance to go home.

“I was just thankful that we still had trees in Le Sueur,” he said.

A few days after, Wersal, Emergency Management Coordinator Hank Sadler and others went to a meeting with townships in Nicollet to talk about the county cleanup. Sadler told Wersal to take some time for herself after and get her nails done. She argued, but he insisted.

Exhausted, she couldn’t make another decision so got the same color. “It was ‘You’re not in Kansas Anymore’ red,” she said.

See COUNTY on 15C The steeple on the Nicollet County Courthouse was rebuilt after the 1998 tornado. (Nancy Madsen/St. Peter Herald)

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PAGE 14

20 YEAR TORNADO

Thursday, March 22, 2018

Gustavus: School experienced $60 million in damage and scrambled to devise makeshift services From Page 10 ers and carpenters became foremen for outside crews.

“It’s a wonderful example of how people rise to the occasion,” Wunderlich said.

One of Kjellgren’s immediate challenges was feeding staff who needed to be on campus. The dining hall was destroyed.

“We had a lot of folks on campus, but there was no way to feed them,” Kjellgren said.

Dining services staff were mostly off because of spring break, so a few women from the custodial staff “rolled up their sleeves” and made sandwiches.

Soon, they had a makeshift kitchen in tents with propane burners and had soup, hotdish and sandwiches for staff cleaning up campus.

And this was supplemented by donations from businesses and institutions in the greater Mankato area. The college’s Sysco contact, Chris Dewanz, organized food service companies heating dishes and then transported them herself to the college.

“She was an angel,” Kjellgren said. “There were lots of angels.”

Light in the darkness

Kjellgren described the first three weeks of cleaning up as “dark.” There were bright spots.

Two weekends featured alumni and friends of the college visiting to help clean up.

“We had beautiful spring days,” Wunderlich recalled. “We were able to accommodate a couple good weekends of alumni and friends of the college coming to help.”

To ease concerns from the insurance company, college officials

had a health service tent that had tetanus shots. Hundreds of people came and brought their work gloves and bag lunches.

“They were so happy to help,” Westphal said. “There were many instances of tears. They had seen Johnson Hall in that state and it was hard to see their alma mater like that.”

Many students lost their dormitory rooms, apartments or housing. Many staff had significant damage at their homes. But some in St. Peter and many, who lived in Mankato or other surrounding towns, had no damage.

“There was a bit of survivor sickness or guilt by those who were not affected,” Kjellgren said.

Westphal said he didn’t have the time to deal with damage at his own home and felt guilt when he had to leave during the summer to take his oldest away to college.

Administrators had counseling available for everyone and they tried to extend more empathy to each other as they dealt with personal damage.

“We were told to watch out for people in crisis,” Westphal said.

“We were intentional about counseling for students and employees that needed someone outside.”

An outside aid group provided small grants to employees to help with immediate needs.

“They told us that in this part of the country, people are more modest and humble about accepting help,” Westphal said. And that held true, but they continued to prod people who had faced great loss.

as some were in thick groves in the Linnaeus Arboretum. But the replanting started by the end of the first week, which was very important to him.

All of the trees and landscaping were donated or supported through special fundraising, as insurance proceeds did not cover landscaping. The college’s landscape architect had a ready design for the front lawn that would allow Old Main to be seen from College Avenue. It would have taken decades to change.

“All of a sudden, I pretty much had a blank canvas,” Wunderlich said.

The two lines of crabapple trees were planted and bloomed that spring after the tornado.

“What a spirit-lifter,” he said.

The biggest bright spot was the return of students to campus after three weeks.

“When the students came back, it was a great lift,” Kjellgren said.

Instead of shying away from the college, students were happy to be back and wanted to help.

They found students, parents and alumni responded with support.

“In a way, it wasn’t terrible,” Kjellgren said. “There was lots of singing the ‘Gustie Rouser’ and students wearing ‘Rebuilding a Greater Gustavus’ T-shirts.”

In the following year, the school had a “record recruiting class with 725 new students,” Westphal said.

Administration squeezed three students to a dorm room and found some off-campus housing.

Anderson Hall had structural Replanting the campus problems and Nobel Hall was seWunderlich said he couldn’t verely damaged, Wunderlich said. count how many trees were lost, Administrators figured out how

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to crunch the remaining seven weeks into five with half the classroom space out of commission.

They added classes on Saturdays and shortened a few class periods.

Through insurance, the college had temporary kitchens in tractor trailers from OK’S Cascade. They were parked behind the Lund Center, where students and staff ate for the remainder of the school year.

From there, it was a mad dash to building a new campus center.

The dining facility had been about three decades old. Early in Kjellgren’s tenure, Gustavus officials had gotten student and faculty input on a new facility. They had created a rough idea of what they wanted and a framework had been approved by the college’s Board of Trustees. It was part of a 10-year facility plan.

“When the tornado blew through, they dusted it off, contacted construction management firm Kraus-Anderson and said, ‘Let’s build this thing,’” Kjellgren said.

Westphal said the board was supportive and just asked administration to keep them informed.

“It gave the college an impetus and reason to be bold then and move forward with new facilities that we most likely would have been more careful and cautious in proceeding,” he said.

Kjellgren worked on retrofitting the existing dining hall for the following school year so they could remove the temporary kitchens. Then, he evaluated and chose kitchen and serving equipment for the new facility. He visited an equipment show in New Orleans and the University of Guelph, near Toronto.

“I had no office, so I was working in the back of my car,” he said.

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The College Avenue entrance as it appeared about two weeks after the March 29, 1998 tornado. The spire on Christ Chapel was knocked over. Many buildings on campus were damaged significantly. (Courtesy of Nicollet County Historical Society)

“And there were nails everywhere because of the tornado, so every other day, I was fixing a flat tire.

It was a crazy time.”

At the time, Kjellgren said, Gustavus’ food options weren’t great. But the change once the facility was created in Jackson Campus Center elevated it “to one that was ranked in the top 10 in the nation in the snap of your fingers,” he said. “Twenty years later, it’s stood the test of time.”

All of the academic buildings were ready in the fall; FEMA trailers and the temporary kitchens were gone. But to make that happen, the campus canceled or moved its normal athletic and academic summer camps. Administrators weighed what to do with staff who normally cooked and cleaned for them.

“We had planted 2,000 trees, so dining services staff were offered jobs watering them,” Westphal said. “And in the residence halls, they all needed to be painted.”

That paint was still wet when all of the students returned to Gustavus for classes to begin.

Contractors added onto a res-

idence hall and built some new apartment buildings. But the summer’s 100-mph wind storm blew down the yet-unfinished structure at the apartment complex. Westphal said he worried the contractor would not have time to complete it, but thanks to a “heroic effort,” it was.

Wunderlich said students, faculty and staff carried a generous spirit despite the difficult circumstances.

“There were amazing kindnesses that happened from all kinds of sources,” he said.

For example, some college students lost their house and all their photographs. The printer made new ones for them for free.

Westphal compared responding to the tornado to a pop quiz with a half-hour of preparation, but the quiz determines the next 10 years.

“The college and so many businesses in St. Peter scored very high marks,” he said.

Reach Associate Editor Nancy Madsen at 507-931-8568 or follow her on Twitter.com @ SPHnancy.

Thursday, March 22, 2018

20 YEAR TORNADO

COUNTY: Half of Nicollet County Offices moved to Regional Treatment Center From Page 13C

County staff move

Due to the damage, offices for Environmental Services, Public Health, Extension, Guardian ad Litem, Information Services, Soil and Water Conservation District and U.S. Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service and Farm Service Agency were moved to the Regional Treatment Center.

In total, about half of the staff were forced to move. The building was unused, so information technology staff, led by Dayle Moore, and maintenance had to hook up phones and computers and create zones for the offices.

“They were just phenomenal to get it ready,” Podhradsky said.

Inside, masking tape marked the sections for the departments.

“I won’t say they really liked the facility,” he said. “But it got the departments to understand what other departments did, which was a real advantage and probably the only advantage.”

County staff were relieved when a 1960s-era glass entry alcove in front of the courthouse, not so affectionately called “the glass monster,” was ruled unstable. It was torn down.

But early on, it looked like it might survive. A retired commissioner quipped, “Even God couldn’t get rid of that thing.”

Before the county officials had even really weighed what to do with the courthouse, then-Gov. Arne Carlson told them to rebuild it in the original form and the state would support it.

“He said funding wouldn’t be an issue and it didn’t come as easily as that,” Podhradsky said. “I had countless meetings for several

months with federal and state officials.”

He said restoring the courthouse was very important.

“I viewed the Nicollet County courthouse as a sort of identity of the community,” he said. “It looks quite a bit like a big church. A lot of counties have the dome. We had the steeple.”

Podhradsky said one of his main tasks was to maintain pressure on FEMA and state Emergency Management Office to provide the aid promised.

“We found that the field representatives for FEMA were not making decisions,” he said. “The first one came and said, ‘Don’t worry about funding. We’ll cover it. You worry about the disaster.’

Shortly after, we learned he had retired to Florida.”

Opportunity to expand

ground loosened the statue of former Gov. John A. Johnson which stands to the north of the courthouse. He had to be laid down in storage for a year and a half while the base was improved.

After the emergency operations center was shut down, Wersal’s role shifted to disaster recovery coordinator so she was in charge of compiling all the disaster-related paperwork and was involved in the restoration of the courthouse and new building.

“It was very stressful, but it was also the most rewarding thing because of the cooperation and camaraderie,” she said.

She had four four-drawer legal filing cabinets stuffed with the paperwork.

“It was almost six years to the day when we got our final FEMA check,” she said.

The completed building was opened to the public in September 2001. Krueger and his staff had spent the entire spring and summer moving about 200 county employees back from the Regional Treatment Center into their new offices.

It helped bring in some of the county staff who leased space around St. Peter. That effort was completed with the construction of the Health and Human Services Building, which opened fall 2015.

Podhradsky said the tornado was the most trying event in his 40 years in government. “But it’s also the event I’m most proud of for the staff, community and working with the city and county board.”

County officials recognized that having the reconstruction happen presented an opportunity for improving the campus.

They extended what was known as the 1977 annex, improved handicapped accessibility and created more space.

“We were short on space before the tornado,” Podhradsky said. “We decided it was an opportunity to build.”

That addition led to the name change to Nicollet County Government Center.

Rebuilding the courthouse tower started in fall 1998; it was re-erected on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving in 1999.

“It is shored on the inside to the first floor with steel plates,” Krueger said.

Reach Associate Editor Nancy That wasn’t the only historic Madsen at 507-931-8568 or work that had to be done. The follow her on Twitter.com @ concussion of debris hitting the SPHnancy.

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20 YEAR TORNADO

Thursday, March 22, 2018

St. Peter showed its mettle, improved facilities, relationships after tornado for that.”

Retired Public Works Director Lewis Giesking suggested that all of the volunteers that poured into St. Peter reflect the type of people who lived in St. Peter.

“They’re well-connected in the state and involved in a whole variety of organizations,” he said.

Giesking, who retired at the end of 2014 and more recently moved to be close to grandchildren in Menomonie, Wisconsin,

said he and wife Barb miss St. Peter and its people.

“Our hearts are still in St. Peter,” he said.

Infrastructure improvements

Making the town better than before was built on groundwork that had been laid through extensive planning. That started with basic infrastructure.

St. Peter pushed hard to get

1998 Tornado

all of its electric lines installed underground. A few years before the tornado, the city planned a transmission line running east to west in the city. At first, Broadway was the targeted route.

“A lot of people did not want to see a transmission line next to their house or alley,” Giesking said. “The council debated that for several weeks or months because

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St. Peter City Administrator Todd Prafke stands outside the St. Peter Public Library and Community Center, which was built at the site of the destroyed Church of St. Peter and John Ireland School after the 1998 tornado. (Nancy Madsen/St. Peter Herald)

By NANCY MADSEN

Those involved in the recovery Having an emergency plan namadesen @stpeterherald.com put people first, instead of organi- is important but “it’s not about zations or territory, Prafke said, the book,” Prafke said. “It’s about St. Peter City Administrator and weren’t afraid to stretch the the journey in creating the book.

There’s no plan that sets you up Todd Prafke is quick to say that rules. the community hasn’t gotten better because of the tornado.

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“They wanted it better than back to zero,” he said. “Zero wasn’t good enough.”

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20 YEAR TORNADO

PAGE 17

BENEFITS: St. Peter gets facelift From Page 16C

times the cost of going overhead.”

The city had already had some new neighborhoods with all utility lines underground and citizens pushed for the underground option.

Councilman John Kvamme said he pushed for Grace Street, which was going to be rebuilt anyway, to be the site of the transmission line. The cost was more, but people wouldn’t have to look at the lines.

The council agreed to put that line underground and passed a resolution that any future development should have lines moved below grade. After the tornado, that resolution was the justification to FEMA and the state to have all of the electric lines installed underground.

“That was a tremendous help to the city, getting all the wires placed underground,” Giesking said.

Giesking also had long-term plans to replace water service lines and sewer service lines.

Kvamme said water on his street was through a daisy chain, so one neighbor could turn off water to all the subsequent people on the service line. Some of the water lines were still those made of lead and the sewer lines had perforated pipe or tile systems that allowed ground water to leak in.

In the parks, the city had plans to upgrade inadequate restroom facilities that didn’t comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Because of tornado damage and the beating the roads took, FEMA paid for all those projects.

Giesking said the master plans for parks and utilities and the city comprehensive plan paved the way for all those projects to Great Place to watch sporting events with 7 LARGE TVS & a back patio for summer nights

happen.

“Especially in smaller communities, it seems to be pie in the sky,” he said. “But then, a disaster happens and that planning becomes crucial to properly coordinate the resources that are available so quickly.”

Putting all those lines underground was a 40-year plan; after the tornado, it was done in three.

A new vision

Before the tornado hit, the city had begun discussions on affordable housing. After the tornado, the Minnesota Design Team came in and helped community members create the new St. Peter.

About 200 people participated in the design team sessions, which led to pictures of what neighborhoods, Minnesota Avenue and the community center should look like.

Housing ended up being integral to that. Southwest Minnesota Housing Partnership submitted a grant to the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency that cost the city $685. The partnership ended up being a huge collaborator with the city on its affordable housing developments, Nicollet Meadows, Washington Terrace and Traverse Green.

First, the former Central School was targeted to rebuild as the community center. After it became clear that the location of utility lines meant the site wasn’t right, the council targeted where the Catholic church had been on the south end of Gorman Park, Kvamme said.

The Church of St. Peter had talked about moving and building larger outside of St. Peter for a while. Kvamme said a backer for the library, which had been Continued on Page 18

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20 YEAR TORNADO

Thursday, March 22, 2018

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close to City Hall, required that the library be separate from the community center. City leaders thought it would be good to have them in close proximity, so they negotiated to have them touch but not be attached.

The city let library funders choose the exterior design.

“We told them, ‘Whatever you choose, we’ll choose similar products,’” Kvamme said.

Now, Wunderlich looks around the town and he says the trees are “filling in nicely.”

“The town did a wonderful job,” he said. “From the county building to the library and community center and on campus, these things might have happened, but it certainly would have not been as fast.”

The intangibles

But beyond all of the utility and facility improvements, Prafke said the tornado provided a watershed moment for cooperation.

“The tornado brought a willingness, whether it was a change of heart or a need from a practical perspective, to work together,” Prafke said. “I like to believe it developed good habits for working together.”

That cooperation laid the groundwork for the location of the new high school and Traverse Green, for a joint city-school district Community Spirit Park.

“St. Peter is so much better off because we work together first,” Prafke said. “And that’s such an important message in today’s world.”

Now city residents have come to expect the governments to work together. The tornado doesn’t drive that anymore.

St. Peter is a unique place, Prafke said, where more people participate in volunteer, civic and government groups, he said.

“I think we differentiate ourselves in key ways and there’s an aura of that,” he said. “There is that something special and it’s lots of different things and it’s different to everyone.”

At Gustavus Adolphus College, the camaraderie and uplift on campus lasted with the incoming class and several years later.

“For four or five years, there was still a sense of ‘We’re all in this together and we’re rebuilding,’” said Steve Kjellgren, associate vice president of auxiliary services.

Students came back to campus wanting to help, retired Vice President of Finance Ken Westphal said, and were frustrated that most of the on-campus work was done by contractors and physical plant workers due to insurance.

“That provided us with an opportunity to outreach to our community partners, the city and farmers,” Westphal said.

Groups of students walked farm fields, raking up and removing debris so farmers could plant.

That gave new and lasting energy to the community service office.

“That was certainly a turning point where businesses had a need, students would help out,” Westphal said.

Retired Physical Plant Director Warren Wunderlich noted that the positive feeling extended beyond campus.

“In other places where there’s been disasters, you might see despair,” Wunderlich said. “You didn’t see that in St. Peter. People were out raking debris in their front yards and you might see them wave or even smile.”

Westphal said they shared equipment with the city during the cleanup. He credited Prafke, Giesking and Wunderlich for growing a cooperative relationship in the immediate aftermath.

“There was a lot more information sharing and a lot more instances of sharing staff or equipment as a result,” Westphal said.

Discussions on sharing facilities grew out of that. Even if those didn’t lead to facility sharing, Westphal said those weren’t wasted discussions.

“It spoke well to the trust that was built,” he said.

St. Peter Public Schools had a growing relationship with Gustavus Adolphus College, Jeff Olson, then high school principal, said.

As a result of the tornado, even more sharing of athletic fields happened and many other discussions occurred. And the district and city had been meeting regularly, which continued. They cooperated on housing develop-

The former Central School and Arts and Heritage Center were destroyed in the 1998 tornado. (Courtesy of Nicollet County Historical Society)

Central Square Apartments was built on the site of the former Central School and Arts and Heritage Center. (Nancy Madsen/St. Peter Herald)

ments.

“It led to the school-city partnership for the new high school and Traverse Green property,” Olson said.

Community and Family Education and early childhood offices and classrooms got a space in the new community center.

“We figured out we don’t need to duplicate efforts,” Olson said.

Olson said the community as a whole got stronger.

“It was almost a turning point in the community as a whole,” Olson said. “We have a good working relationship with the city, Gustavus and businesses. They all stepped up and pulled together. At the end, that continued.”

Bob Podhradsky, Nicollet County Administrator in ‘98, said

county and city officials had met occasionally before the tornado.

But after, they continued to meet every four to six weeks. And that liaison committee spurred similar structures with the small cities in the county.

“We had the ability to work together for a common goal that was shown during the tornado,” he said. “Hopefully, that carried

on.”

Prafke said the character of people in St. Peter was shown through the recovery and rebuilding after the 1998 tornado.

“We all make decisions about ‘How are you going to get up?’”

Prafke said. “St. Peter, with the help of lots of folks, made a different decision than many.”

Thursday, March 22, 2018

20 YEAR TORNADO

Aerial views

of the 1998 tornado destruction

This shows the Capitol Drive area around Gustavus Adolpus College. (Photos courtesy of Nicollet County Historial Society)

The Myrtle and South Fifth street area sustained extensive damage.

The St. Peter Middle School and High School building and grounds were hit hard.

PAGE 19

PAGE 20

20 YEAR TORNADO

Thursday, March 22, 2018

Sports editor gets caught in the middle of the chaos

By PAT BECK

pbeck@stpeterherald.com

It’s been 20 years since my Olsmobile Cutlass Calais was totaled with me in it in downtown St. Peter in the 1998 tornado.

I’ll never forget driving right into the middle of the biggest storm to ever hit St. Peter during my first year as a reporter for St. Peter Herald.

I no longer take tornado warnings or even watches lightly. I get into a secure building as quick as possible or even the basement when the storm is near.

Here is a recap of a wrong course I hope I never take again: I was downtown in my car when the storm struck.

Returning from a trip to the Twin Cities, I thought I could make it home before the storm came through. But I ended up a mile short.

As I approached Le Sueur, it was raining, and then it started to hail between Le Sueur and St. Peter. When I got into town, it was clear — the calm before the storm.

I heard radio reports of a tornado in Nicollet, and I thought about pulling over and taking cover in a ditch or building. But I thought I could get home and to shelter before it arrived in St. Peter.

As I watched trees, street signs and other objects flying by my windshield, I decided to pull over to the curb at Minnesota Avenue (Hwy. 169) and Broadway.

Seconds after I pulled over, the driver’s side windows blew out, so I slid over to the passenger’s seat, crunch down, put a pillow over my head and prayed.

For a moment, after I felt the

Ed Lee, left, former managing editor of the St. Peter Herald, and Pat Beck, sports editor, catalogued the damage 20 years ago after Beck’s close call with the tornado. (Nancy Madsen/St. Peter Herald)

car starting to tip over, I opened the passenger door and just about stepped outside into the tornado.

I remembered that they say that you should not stay in your car in a tornado. A car usually is a precarious shelter in a storm.

But it was too late to get out of my car. Seeing so much debris lying around, I decided to stay inside.

The wave of wind, rain and

various objects continued to pummel my car, the back window blew out and the hood flipped forward cracking the windshield.

I’m grateful for breakaway safety glass. I made it through virtually without a scratch, although I found a lot of pieces of glass in my hair.

My car was a different story.

It was totaled. A metal piece of siding as long as the car was stuck

The bleachers and press box at St. Peter High School’s football field were destroyed in the tornado. (Herald file photo)

under the driver’s side wheels. Either the car started tipping over or the force of the wind pushed the siding under the wheels.

After the wind died down, it continued to rain and water poured down the street. A good Samaritan gave me a ride to the Herald office, where I met Ed Lee, then managing editor, picked up some film and went out to take photos.

Then, as darkness set in, I walked home to find no damage to my southside apartment nor to the cars in the parking lot.

Only a tree blew down on a power line in our backyard. The electricity and telephone were temporarily out, but I was greeting by my landlord, Betty Burke, who provided me with matches and candles and a comforting smile to help brighten a dreary

night.

I was grateful to hear my telephone ring at about 11:30 p.m. with my brother, Dave, on the other end of the line. I told him that I was safe and sound, and he relayed that information to the rest of my family.

Pat Beck is the sports editor of the St. Peter Herald. A version of this column ran in 2013.

The base of the tennis courts at the St. Peter Middle School/High School is pulled up after the tornado due to damage. (Herald file photo)

Thursday, March 22, 2018

20 YEAR TORNADO

PAGE 21

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In this September 1998 photo, John Jacobsen of Jacobsen Metal, Mankato, works on the bleachers at the St. Peter High School football field. The Saints were able to play their games at the field that fall. (Herald file photo)

In this September 1998 photo, Douglas Balfe of Mankato Plumbing and Heating helps replace a water line to the high school. (Herald file photo)

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20 YEAR TORNADO

Thursday, March 22, 2018

Business community rose again from rubble

By ED LEE

Guest columnist

Dr. Greg Engels’ March 29, 1998 birthday surprise was an image on CNN of St. Peter in shambles after the tornado.

He was in Mexico, so he asked a friend back home to check on his dental practice and assure him everything was okay.

When the voice on the other end of the phone started with, “Are you sitting down?” he knew he was in for a long day … long weeks, months and years.

“I caught a plane back right away on April 1,” said Dr. Engels, who, with Dr. Mark Conover owned St. Peter Family Dental along Sunrise Drive. “It was really all surreal.”

The F3 twister’s devastation left St. Peter’s business community in shock. Owners and employees didn’t know where to even start picking up the pieces. Damage within the 1.25-mile wide path varied, but so many had in common leaky roofs and shattered windows. Power and phones were out.

A chronology of challenges started with staying safe around downed wires and gas leaks, then

securing buildings from any looters, protecting property from spring snow and rain, and then relying on lemon- Lee ade-stand experience to do whatever it took to open doors to customers. Getting up and running again meant something different to every business, according to how badly the tornado had victimized each.

St. Peter Lumber was able to open right away and meet needs.

Inventory sold quickly, but delivery trucks were able to get in and out. Who could forget Patrick’s not only opening soon in the wake of the storm, but also being a site for meals to anyone – volunteers, laborers, really anyone – who happened down to Third Street and read the “Free Food” sign.

Arrow Ace Hardware owner Dave Neiman rode out the storm in an old elevator shaft in the building. He was able to open the store right away and even hand twister victims flashlights through the blown-out front windows. Despite serious damage to the build-

ing, Ace managed to stay open.

The supercell dropped tops that spun destruction throughout the downtown business district and well to the north and south.

Aerial photos show just how widespread the winds were. Mature trees laying on their sides speak volumes of the supercell’s power, and pictures show that very scene from Jefferson Park to the west, Minnesota Square Park to the south and east, Gorman Park in the center, Veteran’s Park toward the north and the Minnesota River bottoms to the north and east. Alumacraft’s boats blew like leaves. Hundreds of businesses sustained damage.

The roof of the Herald leaked like a spaghetti strainer, so the computers were moved to the Le Center Leader building for several days so staff could continue cranking out editions.

There must be hundreds of narrations of resilient St. Peter businesses that said the show must

go on. Some of their dramas are chronicled in the pages of newspapers. It seems that few of these folks wrote down their own experiences. We know they were busy.

We also know businesses were there for townsfolk and travelers seeking cover when the great green-gray wall enveloped the burg at 5:29 p.m. on the ominously warm spring afternoon.

Dairy Queen sheltered them in a walk-in freezer. Country Kitchen had them hiding under tables.

St. Peter Food Co-op, then near the Broadway Bridge, kept them safe from flying boards and every other building material whipping through the air.

Colorful yarn from Mary Lue’s colored the sea of debris for miles after winds peeled the business’s roof away. Thousands of bricks from downtown buildings blocked sidewalks. The Video Magic building appearing as if it had been war bombed.

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An aerial view shows damage to the downtown Nicollet Hotel.

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Drs. Mark Conover and Greg Engels, both of whom retired recently, rebuilt their St. Peter Dental Center building in the same place it had been. In the wake of the storm, for them, “finding a way” meant serving their patients in a FEMA trailer for several

months.

Ask any local businessperson just how they were able to rise from the ruble of the 1998 twister, and they will tell you one of the most compelling stories in this town’s history.

Ed Lee is the executive director of the St. Peter Area Chamber of Commerce. At the time of the tornado, he was the managing editor of the St. Peter Herald.

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PAGE 24

20 YEAR TORNADO

Thursday, March 22, 2018

March 29, 1998 St. Peter, Minnesota Photo by Sam Johnson

T wenty y ears ag o, N icol l et C ou nty B ank u til iz ed ou r “ D isaster Pl an” with th e h el p of l oy al , d ed icated em p l oy ees and managed to keep operating as a business using generators, print outs and assistance from local government officials.

O u r O p erations em p l oy ees m ad e trip s to ou r b ack -u p site to m ak e su re cu stom er b ank accou nt inf orm ation was k ep t current. Our bank website was used as a Message Board so folks could communicate and learn about updates with new progress. Our staff worked together to check and repair damages to our building after checking the condition of their own homes. The haunting sounds of the chain saws and generators cut through the eerie silence outside. The owners of Third Street Tavern came from Mankato to make sandwiches and hand them out to volunteers on our bank sidewalk. Twenty years ago—seems so long ago, yet in some ways….just like yesterday.

Thanks to all the volunteers, NCB employees, city officials and to the leaders at Gustavus Adolphus College for leading the charge in forging ahead to new and better days! The best in people truly shows up during the worst of times.

220 South Third Street • Telephone 931-3310 • St. Peter • www.nicolletcountybank.com