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Serving Northern St. Louis County, Minnesota

Emergency responders

Time to thank those who help our area recover when disaster strikes

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In the wake of any devastating disaster, be it natural or otherwise, it can be easy to focus on our own loss and inconvenience and forget about those who put their personal concerns aside to turn their attention to the clean-up, rescue, and recovery.

The destruction from last week’s powerful storm was widespread, but so was the response by those we regularly turn to when the roads are blocked, the power is out, or some other tragedy strikes.

While most of us slept through the storm, or went back to sleep after the worst of it had passed, for others it was a call to action. Within minutes of the storm’s passage, it was clear it was no ordinary severe thunderstorm. In fact, as we report this week, the storm qualified as a derecho, a term used for the most powerful and long-lasting of non-tornadic storms, and it proved devastating across hundreds of miles of northern and east-central Minnesota.

For the rural electrical cooperative, Lake Country Power, the impact was astounding, with nearly two-thirds of their customers reporting power outages in the immediate aftermath of the storm’s destructive winds. The task of clearing thousands of downed trees, repairing broken power lines and poles, and restoring individual electrical service to 27,000 homes from Kettle River to Crane Lake, was Herculean. The co-op’s line crews, with help from other utilities, worked 16-hour days for more than a week to restore service to all Lake Country Power customers.

Public works crews in places like Ely, where hundreds of trees went down in the storm, began their own monumental cleanup effort less than two hours after the storm passed through. The Ely crews had roads and alleys to clear, big urban shade trees to cut up and remove, and power lines and service to restore to customers of the city’s public utility.

The storm also brought tragedy, and it was members of the St. Louis County Rescue Squad and the Morse-Fall Lake Volunteer Fire Department who answered the call, clearing countless downed trees as they responded to the report of injuries and fatalities on Basswood Lake. It’s worth noting that these very special responders are all volunteers and that we rely on them time and again to be there when a hunter or hiker gets lost, canoeists injure themselves or worse, or when snowmobilers veer off the trail and hit a tree miles from the nearest road. These folks give up countless hours of their time to engage in rescue efforts, often late at night or under the worst weather conditions.

Be they line crews, public works staff, police, or volunteer firefighters and medical technicians, it’s sometimes easy to take the work of our emergency responders for granted, in part because so many of them are so good at what they do. Their professionalism is evident as they put their own lives on hold, often for days at a time without complaint, for the aid of others. So when a major disaster strikes, it’s a good time to ponder their incredible contribution to our communities. Because of them, we know someone has our back when the chips are down. And that deserves a mighty big Thank You!