Deer River, small northern MN town, battered by storm

The northern Minnesota town of Deer River, population 900, filled with the sound of chainsaws Wednesday as residents cleaned up after the previous night's storm.

The small town in Itasca county was hit especially hard. The power is still out across much of Deer River and the surrounding few miles. Fire crews and volunteer workers are coordinating out of the Deer River Fire Department.

"At first it was just a lot of wind and blew some of the chairs off my deck and after that it just escalated really quickly," said the Rev. Anthony Craig. "I heard a big crash so I headed to the basement. And the big crash was actually a tree on my garage, with my car in it. So I have to figure that one out."

The garage was nearly cut in half by a two-foot-thick pine tree. The ruined structure belongs to St. Mary's Parish, where Craig leads Mass but the car is his.

He waded through the debris to retrieve his priest's robes from the car's back seat. The robes were fine, but the car was crushed.

"We're going to have to do a little Christian burial for it," he joked.

There's a ticking clock on Deer River's cleanup — Friday is the start of the town's annual Wild Rice Festival. Carnival rides are parked on flatbeds in the high school parking lot.

There's just two days to get the power back on and the streets cleared of debris.

On the outskirts of town, Heather Wise wasn't thinking about festivals, or wild rice. She rents an apartment in the attic of the S & S Bottle Shop. She was there with her 9-year-old daughter when the storm tore the roof off.

"I had hail coming in. It was coming through the windows. It was coming down from the ceiling. Rain was coming in. It was terrible," she said.

Like everyone else here, Wise is hard at work, saving what the storm spared and clearing away the wreckage it left behind.