Brainerd Lakes still cleaning up after Sunday's storms

The Brainerd Lakes area is still in clean-up mode three days after a midsummer storm that left a swath of debris and damage in its path.

At resorts, cabins and homes across the region, people have been away branches, swept up broken glass and sliced up trees downed by powerful winds Sunday night. Several resorts were forced to close at the height of tourist season.

The storm left a path of destruction 8 miles long and 3 miles wide that cut across the border between Cass and Crow Wing counties.

The straight-line winds — which reportedly hit 70 mph — hit the large resorts around Gull Lake especially hard. At Cragun's Resort on the lake's southwestern shores, workers spent Tuesday hauling away branches and cutting up trees. The resort will be closed for at least a week, as workers clean up from the storm.

Six hundred guests were staying at the 75-year-old resort Sunday evening when the winds hit. No one was injured and there was no significant structural damage to buildings, said marketing director Nancy Krasean, but some of the resort's pine trees didn't survive.

"It took a lot of the giant Norways," she said, "but there's still an awful lot of trees here. It's just a little surprising [in] certain areas ... this doesn't look familiar because there's not trees in front of it."

Krasean said Cragun's will stay closed until next week, though the golf course may open earlier.

"It's peak season," she said. "Couldn't have picked a worse possible time."

Matt Killian, president of the Brainerd Lakes Chamber of Commerce, said his organization has been busy connecting displaced Gull Lake resort guests with new lodging.

"It gives people a chance to stay at these small resorts," he said. "So we hope that there's a silver lining to the storm there."

To the east, on North Long Lake, Sullivan's Resort and Campground, one of the smaller vacation spots, lost 450 feet of dock and two jet skis.

The cabins and campsites were spared, but owner Deanna Pekar said that, without power and water — and with limited sewer usage for more than a day — it was difficult to keep some customers.

"They lasted as long as they could, but even that got to be too long for some of them," she said. "So we did lose about three cabin customers and five campsites. It is substantial, especially in the heart of July, our busy time."

Cabin owners across the region felt the effects of Sunday's rough weather, too. Ted McClure saw the storm cut across Lake Hubert from one of his cabins near Nisswa, Minn.

As he watched branches, leaves and debris fly by his picture window, a large white pine began falling toward his building. The roots slowed the tree's fall — and it came to rest on the roof right above the window.

"It was scary," he said, "But if I had to do it again, I'd get the heck out of there and get in the basement somewhere."

A day later, McClure looked on as a team with chainsaws cleared downed trees around the property he's owned for about 30 years.

"The pines were just bending at an angle," he said. "They looked like they would just snap or pull out of the ground at any time. And a couple of them did. I guess in all on the property here, I probably lost at least 15 to 20 trees."

The storm also shut down facilities and roads in the Pillsbury State Forest. Now the Department of Natural Resources says the damage to the forest isn't as bad as originally thought.

Brainerd area assistant forest supervisor Steve Bartz boarded a small plane Tuesday afternoon to survey the storm's impact on the forest. The same storm had dropped a 100-year-old red pine in his own front yard, so Bartz was expecting the worst.

"I thought we were going to lose thousands of acres," he said.

But what he saw from the plane was much less dramatic. Only about 500 acres of forest were affected by the storm. More importantly, Bartz said, the damage was spread out in small groups rather than concentrated in vast fields of ruined trees.

Damage to Pillsbury forest, while less than expected, will still take some time to clean up. Many of the trees fell over forest roads and Bartz said clearing them is slow going.

Crews were able to clear a path to four groups of campers who were staying in the forest at the time of the storm, but it will be a few weeks until the rest of the forest is open.

"It's not as bad as it could be," he said, "I think we all got lucky that no one got hurt."

MPR News reporter John Enger contributed to this report.