Memories mark tornado anniversary

By CHRIS VETTER

Journal Staff Writer

COMFREY -- Pat Wensauer of rural Comfrey thought about it as she woke up Thursday morning. She mentioned it to co-workers when she got to work. For Wensauer, the memories are all still fresh.

Thursday marked the three-year anniversary of the tornado that ripped through downtown Comfrey, then cut a path a destruction across southern Minnesota, including rural Hanska and St. Peter.

For Wensauer, March 29, 1998, will be a day she will never forget.

"You try to block it out, but it's always in the back of your mind," Wensauer said Thursday. "When a tornado hits somewhere else, you can understand what they are going through."

Wensauer was in her family's dairy barn that Sunday afternoon. People recall it was a warm day, especially for March, and she was busy doing chores. She hadn't heard any weather reports.

"It was perfectly calm," she recalled.

For Wensauer and her husband, the storm hit very quickly and without warning.

"We just thought it was rain," Wensauer recalled. "Then my husband saw it. He just grabbed me. There was no time for us to get anywhere for protection."

So the Wensauers crouched in the northeast corner of the dairy barn. And waited. The storm ripped the west wall off the barn.

Pressure from the intense winds caused Wensauer to get a queasy stomach.

"It felt like it was sucking the insides out of you," she said. "The pressure was awful. I've never felt like that in my whole life."

Finally the storm ended, and the Wensauers emerged from their barn to inspect the damage.

"You're scared of what you will see and find when you come out," she said. "We experienced damage to every building on the farm."

The storm also caught Jason Fiedler by surprise. He was at a birthday party for his brother-in-law, playing games with the family outside, when the tornado arrived.

"It looked like one big dust storm," Fiedler recalled. "It was black. I thought it would just blow through."

The sky was clear in the morning, followed by some clouds, before the air turned green just before the storm struck around 4:30 p.m.

Fiedler realized that the winds were more than any ordinary dust storm when he saw a barn shatter and collapse from the storm.

"You don't expect to see what it did," he said.

Fiedler estimates that the sirens went off for only 45 seconds before the power plant lost electricity. The family ran to the basement and waited for the storm to end.

"You could hear boards hitting the walls, and the walls cracking and crumbling. Then you had the smell of insulation, and knew the walls were gone," Fiedler said. "The only wall left standing was in the bathroom."

Fiedler has since moved to Springfield, although he still works in Comfrey. He estimates that 20 families moved out of town after the storm rather than rebuild.

Rory Kopischke works at Harvest Land Cooperative in Comfrey. He said the elevator and almost its storage facilities were destroyed.

"Prior to the storm, we had room to store 1.2 million bushels," Kopischke said. "After the storm, we could only store 27,000 bushels of grain."

The new, improved elevator was built later that year with more storage space.

"We have a nicer elevator, but it's a helluva way to get it," Kopischke said.

Linda Friesen, Comfrey city clerk, was returning to town from New Ulm when she was pelted with hail more than an inch in diameter. She stopped at her parents' home and waited out the storm, unaware of the damage happening in Comfrey.

"If I hadn't stopped there, I would have driven right into the tornado," Friesen said.

As she later drove toward Comfrey, her eyes were drawn to the twisted steel road signs. She then noticed the damaged houses and missing barns. When she got to town, she had to walk into Comfrey to avoid downed power lines blocking the roads. The damage was surreal. She can't believe how normal the town looks now, compared to her initial impressions when she walked into Comfrey.

"If you would have seen that end of town, it wouldn't have seemed possible," Friesen said. "It looked like a war zone, between the trees, power lines and damaged buildings."

Friesen said the city has now completed its final rehabilitation projects, with a finished wastewater treatment plant and street and utility upgrades conducted last summer.

For some Comfrey residents, the storm is still too difficult to discuss. Others are tired of talking about the tornado, and want to bury it in the past.

Fiedler considers himself and the town rather lucky, noting that no one died in Comfrey.

"Someone was looking out for us," Fiedler said. "A storm like that could have killed a lot of people."