MN Tornado

[Klaus]

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Doesn't look too good. Only 1 death however.

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[Ender]

Fairly weak tornado it seems. If it was any stronger, there would have been quite a few dead considering the highly populated area that it went through.

The one that went through Joplin at around the same time was a damn hurricane.

[MnWilly]

That map you posted Scott is very accruate. I started at about 3pm Sunday and didn't get home until after 10am Monday morning. I was attached to a fire unit doing door to door SAR for the first few hours. Then we got put on a zone patrol function for the curfew. It was a "soft" curfew meaning that we really didn't arrest people. We did have the authority to but it really never came to that. People for the most part were not out to violate the curfew. There were quite a few burglaries overnight but there wasn't wide spread looting. I was really nervous that the overnight hours could bring some crazy stuff but it really wasn't bad at all. Part of the reason is because of the massive amount of police in the neighborhoods. There were MPLS, ST PAUL, HENNEPIN CO, RAMSEY CO, and a few other smaller agencies. The real danger for us was not getting hit by another squad car when we were responding to calls. I rarely give credit to the higher ups for their planning but they did a really good job on this one. The combination with a ton of police and orders of a "soft" curfew were a good call. It gave the neighborhood the protection they needed without creating a "police state" situation.

I realize this was a fairly weak tornado but it did cause a massive amount of damage. There were dozens of roads that were simply unpassable and it made the SAR and patrol functions very difficult. We had to do SAR on foot. The homes for the most part were still standing but they did have lots of damage. The biggest problem for that neighborhood is the downed trees, power lines, and broken gas lines. More than once I found myself just about stepping on downed power lines because they were hidden by all the debris.

[Ender]

Nice Mike, great job.