MPR’s Tom Weber provides an intimate perspective while visiting Hugo, Minnesota in the aftermath of a tornado. It's a painful, difficult week for people in the St. Paul suburb.
On May 25, 2008, supercell thunderstorms produced large hail and tornadoes from the northern Twin Cities metro area to western Wisconsin. Four tornadoes touched down in Minnesota. The strongest tornado was an EF-3 which hit Hugo, Minnesota. The EF-3 tornado packed winds up to 165 mph, destroyed trees, houses, barns, and silos. Two-year-old Nathanial Prindle was killed, and nine others were injured.
Transcripts
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SPEAKER: The hardest hit area was an 8 to 10 block section of a subdivision that's right under the big Hugo water tower. After the tornado Sunday, no one was allowed back in until Monday afternoon. That timing made me the first MPR reporter to have access.
For me, this was the first time I'd ever been so close to such destruction, so soon after the disaster. The damage was still new and very raw. There aren't many reporters present, company included, who I feel can truly relay the enormity and the severity of the damage these storms create.
There also aren't many reporters who I know who love approaching people on what is surely one of the worst days of their lives to get an interview, and you never know how people will react when you approach them. Sometimes, it almost seems therapeutic when they talk, but you just never know.
And just about everyone I approached in Hugo was very open and willing to talk. Beth and John Breish lived, and still plan to live after they rebuild in one of the cul-de-sacs off 159th street. I was drawn to their property when I spied a set of champagne glasses that escaped the storm unharmed, even though their grill, for example, was thrown into their basement. Beth Breish says they were camping when the storm hit.
BETH BREISH: Because the area that we would have been hiding in is, well, is full of rubble. So yeah, I'm very thankful for everything. My neighbor was under his house, the house had fallen on top of him, and the tornado took his shoes off his feet.
This gentleman was on his front porch holding on. If he would have gone in the living room, he'd be gone. If he would have been in the garage, he'd have been gone. It's just amazing for what we still have and that we all have each other. And a house is a house. We can replace it and rebuild it.
SPEAKER: Beth then walked over to what was the front of her house and looked into her basement, where her husband, John was cleaning. I walked around to get a photo and overheard their chat. There, in the pile made up of their lives, he'd found her wedding dress.
BETH BREISH: Oh, you got my wedding dress?
JOHN BREISH: Yeah, I find your wedding dress.
SPEAKER: She started sobbing. I didn't think I cared about it, she said, but I do.