MPR’s John Ydstie walks through the town of Gary, Minnesota after a tornado demolished much of the town. Ydstie interviews numerous residents as they work to recover and clean-up.
In the early morning hours of July 5, 1978, a group of tornadoes moved through parts of Norman, Mahnomen, Polk and Clearwater Counties in Minnesota. The Gary-Fosston-Clearbrook Tornado, an F2 storm, brought devastation to the town of Gary. The storms caused four fatalities and dozens of injuries as it passed through the three towns.
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JOHN YDSTIE: The scene here on the South side of the small town of Gary, Minnesota, is quite incredible. As I look around, there are trees splintered off and uprooted, huge trees being uprooted. Across the town, I can see the elevator where the roof was torn off the elevator and grain bins were crushed as if they were someone's beverage can. Over there, also there are two huge railroad hopper cars turned over on their sides off of the railroad siding.
Right now driving by me, there's a large Caterpillar pulling a huge tree right down the street and out of town. As I look down this street, there are many, many more trees that will have to be pulled out of town. It looks like right now I'm standing in the exact spot that the tornado ripped through the town. From one end to the other, there is nothing but splintered trees and toppled houses and turned over garages.
The scene becomes even more poignant when you begin to look at some of the houses that have been destroyed and all of their contents spewing out on the ground. Here comes another caterpillar hauling a huge jam of trees and limbs down the road. But as you look through the rubble here, you can see people's pots and pans laying in the ditches.
There's a bathroom sink laying over there, an old phonograph record, a high school annual, clothes, mattresses, and all the things that each of us have in our closets and never expect them to be strewn out over the lawn, over the road. But with the tornado last night, people in Gary find that their belongings are indeed scattered around the town.
As we move farther on down this street in Gary, Minnesota, there's a man who is boarding up a house and maybe we can go in and talk with him. Across his lawn here, there's a huge power line. And I'm going to step through this mess. I hope these wires aren't live. Go up and see if he likes to talk to us. Excuse me, sir.
BOB RAMSTAD: Yeah.
JOHN YDSTIE: My name is John Ydstie from Minnesota Public Radio. I wonder if I could ask you a couple of questions.
BOB RAMSTAD: Yeah, fine, sir.
JOHN YDSTIE: Is this your house?
BOB RAMSTAD: This is my house. Yes.
JOHN YDSTIE: This happened last night?
BOB RAMSTAD: Last night.
JOHN YDSTIE: Do you--
BOB RAMSTAD: Or this morning.
JOHN YDSTIE: --consider yourself one of the lucky ones maybe, or--
BOB RAMSTAD: Very much so. All we lost is a few windows and a lot of dirt inside. The house is structurally pretty good yet, I think.
JOHN YDSTIE: What are you doing this morning?
BOB RAMSTAD: Just boarding up windows. Just getting it closed up here so we get-- in case of rain.
JOHN YDSTIE: Are you going to continue to live in it?
BOB RAMSTAD: Yes. Well, the house is OK, I think. It's just all full of dirt and water.
JOHN YDSTIE: What happened last night? Can you describe what went on?
BOB RAMSTAD: No, I can't. We weren't at home last night. We were out at the cottage, and I got a call this morning about 4:30 that something had happened in town here so I better get in. And so the house was empty actually. So we were lucky both ways. We weren't here, and the house came out OK to us.
JOHN YDSTIE: Well, what went through your mind as you drill back from the cottage last night?
BOB RAMSTAD: Mostly, did I have a house left, I think.
[CHUCKLES]
JOHN YDSTIE: Were you relieved when you saw?
BOB RAMSTAD: Pretty much so, yes. You betcha. It's a terrible thing to come home and find your yard and your house like this. But at least the house is here. And that's better than a lot of people in town.
JOHN YDSTIE: I just looked up and saw that huge tank sitting in your hedge there. Where did that come from?
BOB RAMSTAD: That came all the way from the elevator, which is two blocks away from here. Way over past all those houses over there. I don't know how it here, but that's where it came from.
JOHN YDSTIE: Unbelievable. Well, you're lucky it landed 20 feet that way.
BOB RAMSTAD: Yeah. A little further more and she'd have been right in the living room.
JOHN YDSTIE: Yeah. Well, that's several tons, probably, or a ton or so.
BOB RAMSTAD: It's a heavy outfit. I don't know what it is even.
JOHN YDSTIE: Thank you for talking with us. What was your name?
BOB RAMSTAD: Bob Ramstad.
JOHN YDSTIE: Thank you very much.
BOB RAMSTAD: Thank you, John.
JOHN YDSTIE: Let's continue our walk down this street toward the school in Gary. As we're walking down the street, you can see a squad of National Guard men with a huge crane and a chain trying to pull a tree off of somebody's roof. And further down the street, here is a spot where the tornado struck in an incredible, incredibly devastating manner.
There are several houses just completely leveled and people picking up junk, trying to salvage what they can from the houses that they were living in only yesterday afternoon and sleeping in last evening when the tornado struck at about 3 o'clock in the morning. It's an unbelievable sight.
I didn't recognize what was in front of me before, but there's a really twisted wreckage of a bottom of a trailer house. No walls or anything. Just the chassis twisted back over as if it was tin foil instead of steel. Let's go and talk to this gentleman who's cleaning up some mess. Sir, could I ask you a couple of questions?
JEAN BOLLIG: Yes.
JOHN YDSTIE: My name is John Ydstie. I'm from Minnesota Public Radio. Do you live in this house here?
JEAN BOLLIG: No, my neighbor. My neighbor lived here.
JOHN YDSTIE: Where do you live?
JEAN BOLLIG: Second house right across the street.
JOHN YDSTIE: You're relatively without damage.
JEAN BOLLIG: Very little damage in my house.
JOHN YDSTIE: But this house is completely destroyed.
JEAN BOLLIG: Completely destroyed. There was a small boy who lost his life in this house.
JOHN YDSTIE: This house was one of those?
JEAN BOLLIG: Right, yeah.
JOHN YDSTIE: So I understand that there was a trailer house in this area as well--
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
JEAN BOLLIG: Well, that's out toward the highway from here, right out on Highway 32. That's the fella that lost his life in the trailer. Yes. And there was a little baby lost his life in another mobile home just a half a block east of where we're standing here.
JOHN YDSTIE: Yeah, I can see that there's a wreckage of a mobile home scattered all over.
JEAN BOLLIG: There's many mobile homes. There was one right here that was demolished and one just west of this house we're standing by that was demolished, but no one injured in either one of them.
JOHN YDSTIE: The tornado must have just come right through here where we're standing.
JEAN BOLLIG: We're right in the heart of it. As I understand, this is the worst part of town.
JOHN YDSTIE: And you can see where trees over here are completely sheared off.
JEAN BOLLIG: That's correct. Yes.
JOHN YDSTIE: Yeah.
JEAN BOLLIG: This seems to be the center of it right here. And this is the center of this small town too. It literally went right through the heart of the town. Yes.
JOHN YDSTIE: What are you doing now?
JEAN BOLLIG: Taking personal things out. The insurance people here they said we could take the personal items out without him being here to see it. So any papers and stuff that might get wet by another rain or something, clothing, anything personal like that, we're moving out of the house, trying to save as much as we can for our neighbors.
JOHN YDSTIE: Your neighbors are probably in the hospital now?
JEAN BOLLIG: Half of the families are in the hospital and the father's down there with his wife and a daughter who are injured quite badly along with the little boy was killed, like I say. He was, I believe, 13 years old.
JOHN YDSTIE: Did you see what happened? Could you see anything last night?
JEAN BOLLIG: No, I couldn't see anything. I just knew there was a wind in my house, and we tried to get into the basement from our-- we have a two story house. We did not get into the basement. But like I say, we had minor damage to our house. But then pretty soon the people that were injured started coming to our door and we had our house full. They took two ambulance loads out of our house of injured people when the ambulances finally got here.
JOHN YDSTIE: What-- what's it like trying to find anything in this mess? Can you find anything?
JEAN BOLLIG: Pretty hard. We were looking for his billfold in particular because of credit cards and things that naturally, a person don't want to lose. And we have been unable to find that. He told us where it was, but we cannot find it.
JOHN YDSTIE: What went through your mind last night as all this was going on? Did you have time to think?
JEAN BOLLIG: Thought about the little boy that was killed, primarily because we have known him since he was born. That was about on my mind all the time, I guess. I was with him all the time, trying to keep him warm with blankets and waiting for the ambulance. And he was on my mind all the time. Yes.
JOHN YDSTIE: Did he die on the way to the hospital?
JEAN BOLLIG: That's what they tell me. Yes.
JOHN YDSTIE: Yes. Thank you very much, sir. What was your name?
JEAN BOLLIG: Bollig. Jean Bollig.
JOHN YDSTIE: Thank you very much. Well, that's the scene on this sunny afternoon in Gary, Minnesota, a day which under other circumstances would have been just another beautiful, sunny summer day in this Northwest Minnesota town. Instead, for the townspeople, it's just the end of a nightmare as they try to collect their belongings and their thoughts and put their town back together after last night's devastating tornado. In Gary, Minnesota, this is John Ydstie.