On Sunday March 29th a huge storm tore across more than 60 miles of south/central Minnesota. The storm took out much of the small town of Comfry. Then, around 5:30 pm, an F3 tornado, carrying winds of up to 206 miles per hour, smashed through St. Peter. Two people died--one, a boy just six years old.
MPR's Lynette Nyman was in St. Peter that night and has followed the recovery since then.
Frequently referred to as the 1998 Comfrey–St. Peter tornado outbreak, 14 tornadoes (including an F3 & F4) wrought destruction in southern Minnesota on March 29, 1998. More than 3,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed by the tornadoes. The towns of St. Peter and Comfrey were utterly devastated. Storms left two people dead and dozens injured
Transcripts
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LYNETTE NYMAN: As the warning sirens roared, most people ran to a basement, if they had one. A few of the brave, or maybe the foolish ventured outside to watch. That was until the tornado blasted across the city of St. Peter. It was over in just a matter of moments.
As people emerged, most were unsure what had happened. But it was evident everything had changed.
SPEAKER 1: The width of it was, I would say, a mile to a mile and a half because there was a farm off in the distance, and it was completely covered. The whole area was covered with the motion of this tornado.
LYNETTE NYMAN: Uprooted trees, downed power lines, shattered glass, and other debris covered the roads. Public safety workers spread out looking to help, dealing with problems strewn across the town. As darkness descended, hundreds of people wandered the streets looking for friends and family. Nearly all communications were out.
Only a scattering of phones around the outer edges of town still worked. Cell phone systems were overloaded. With the darkness came the cold, which was to grip many people who were to be without heat and power for the coming week. Many, like Robby Lynn and his family, had a lot less.
ROBBY LYNN: We lost two houses. One's right here. And one's out in the country. We just moved out, not even completely moved out into the country yet. And that's totally, totally gone. Trailer house, five sheds, houses, there's no house.
LYNETTE NYMAN: Business owners boarded up busted storefronts using plywood available at a local lumber yard on a take now, pay later basis. Bulldozers rumbled through the streets, pushing aside the storm's wreckage.
Later in the night, the National Guard patrolled the town with military trucks blocking off the streets. The cliche, it's like a war zone, seemed to carry more weight. People desperately tried to come to terms with what had happened.
SPEAKER 2: Well, it's a disaster. Total scary. But at least we're alive. That's the main thing.
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SPEAKER 3: We're standing here. We're vertical. And that's about it. The Lord is with us. He didn't do too very good a job on that church down there, though.
LYNETTE NYMAN: The town was designated a federal disaster area almost immediately, Federal Emergency Management officials set up at the state hospital, along with the Red Cross and a shelter for displaced people.
Soon, people needed to find something more permanent. Some turned to FEMA for help.
SPEAKER 4: This is a list of some temporary housing units in the area that may be and may fit your needs. So if you would like to look through that list.
[? ANN MINK: ?] OK. Do you know if there's anything that's available right in St. Peter? It doesn't look good.
SPEAKER 4: I didn't have a chance to even look through that thing.
[? ANN MINK: ?] Well, my only problem is that I am an EMT with the ambulance service, and I need to be in town.
LYNETTE NYMAN: [? Ann ?] [? Mink ?] helped tornado victims all night. Then she returned to her own badly damaged home. An hour later, people started knocking on [? Mink's ?] door to help her pack up before she moved to another other location.
[? ANN MINK: ?] I wandered around going, well, I don't know what to do. Usually, when you're planning a move, you've packed up a good five, six weeks in advance. And I had no clue how to go about getting all this stuff out of this house and where it was going to go and whatever. And it was just amazing because I had all these people packing my belongings.
LYNETTE NYMAN: In the next few days, St. Peter was hit by a second force of nature, human nature, the desire to help out. Thousands of people poured into the city for the cleanup. The Salvation Army logged 20,000 volunteers within a 12-day period. There were so many, some were turned away.
Gustavus Adolphus College alumni returned to their Alma Mater, which sustained around $50 million in damage. Kevin Miller of the class of '73 printed T-shirts with the slogan, Rebuilding a Greater Gustavus.
He wore one while handing out gold and black lapel pins to volunteers. Miller was heading home from vacation, when the storm hit the college.
KEVIN MILLER: In fact, I was sitting in the airport in Phoenix writing a letter to all of my former teachers here at Gustavus. Excuse me. Just inviting them to be a part of our 25th anniversary. And so it was about the same time that the tornado was going on. So as soon as we got back to Minneapolis, we heard about it. And I came down right away.
It was like losing your own house because it's a part of me. And I think that's how all the Gustavus people feel.
LYNETTE NYMAN: The storm damaged many of St. Peter's historic treasures. Some, like the county courthouse and the Nicollet Hotel, are being restored. Then there are those, like the old St. Peter Central School building.
For the past 20 years, the Victorian era structure housed the Arts and Heritage Center. Arne Langsjoen, a lifelong St. Peter resident, was inside when the tornado smashed into the building.
ARNE LANGSJOEN: It just got pitch black. And the thing I'd never read about in tornadoes was all electricity in that blackness. It's just totally black out through the windows. And yet, there were sparks flying every which way.
LYNETTE NYMAN: Langsjoen was just finishing a three-year project, hand restoring the building's 86 windows.
ARNE LANGSJOEN: Before the tornado, there were three left. The 84th one was on the desk. That's when I was working on. So it was a bad time tornado. I wish they had waited until I could have got a picture of the whole building. But it didn't. And now, it's hopeless. They can't restore that, I don't think.
LYNETTE NYMAN: Langsjoen was right. Demolition crews brought down the building's remnants in November. People watched in tears. For some, damage to St. Peter's last Catholic Church was just as painful.
HARRY BEHAN: You see the little lamb of god. It was put into the high altar here a while back. So that's preserved.
LYNETTE NYMAN: The day after the storm, Father Harry Behan, pastor of the Church of St. Peter, surveyed the damage. Gaping holes bled daylight, where once rose windows cast a warm glow on parishioners sitting in the pews below.
HARRY BEHAN: I had a service this Sunday at 4 o'clock with a reconciliation service with the full church. We finished at 10 to 5:00. And by 5:30, there was no church, as we know it. And so it was pretty devastating.
I met a woman yesterday. And I said, Perkins in Mankato. And she said, oh, do you realize another 15 minutes, and I'd have been in heaven because I'd just received absolution. So kind of wry humor. People laugh, laugh, laugh during tragedies.
LYNETTE NYMAN: It's been nine months since the St. Peter tornado. Many businesses have reopened. Competition for contractors remains fierce as homeowners rebuild. The city's total damage estimates stands between $250 and $300 million.
And while St. Peter's residents are reconstructing their lives, they're trying to help mother nature too. Known for its tree lined streets, St. Peter lost almost all of its foliage in the tornado. The city has replanted about 600 trees. Another 1,500 are slated for planting next spring.
But there's still a lot more sky in St. Peter than there was before March 29, 1998. I'm Lynette Nyman, Minnesota Public Radio.
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