[18529] in APO-L
Gustavus Information
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Chris Stromberg)
Sun Apr 5 18:19:22 1998
Date: Sun, 5 Apr 1998 16:25:59 -0500
Reply-To: Chris Stromberg <cstrombe@GAC.EDU>
From: Chris Stromberg <cstrombe@GAC.EDU>
To: APO-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Brothers,
Okay, now that Gustavus' server is back on line, and I am back from my
Spring Break trip, I can give you a bit more information on what happened
in St. Peter.
The tornado that went through was classified as an F3 tornado (pretty darn
powerful). The winds were 150-200 miles per hour, and the tornado was over
a mile wide.
Our campus was pretty badly damaged (estimates are between $40 to $60
million dollars worth of damage to our campus alone). Roughly 80 to 90
percent of the windows on campus were destroyed. Nearly every tree on the
campus is gone. We lost at least one dorm for sure (Johnson Hall for those
familiar with the campus). Another dorm is very badly damaged. We also
lost a couple of other buildings (including a lot of our grounds crew
storage building). Our Chapel also lost it's 150 foot steeple in the wind.
Now, for the good news. The campus is coming back. There were over 5000
volunteers in St. Peter and on campus on Saturday. All of the debris from
the trees was already cleared less than 5 days after the tornado. Many of
the windows had already been replaced.
The damage for students was pretty bad. Many windows in dorms blew out,
sucking belongings out. I was pretty lucky, as my window held. I did lose
my car (no glass left, no radiator left, golf-ball sized or larger dents
over the whole car), along with about 100 other cars in that lot (mostly
cars of people out serving on Habitat for Humanity work trips, ironically).
We were really lucky, though.
In the whole series of roughly 5 tornadows in 11 towns (almost completely
destroying one town), there were only two fatalities and a handful of
serious injuries.
To give you an idea of the power of this storm, when I was on campus
yesterday, I pulled a piece of glass out of a tree. The piece had been
imbedded over an inch into the heart of the tree. We are just lucky that
we were on Spring Break, so there weren't 2300 students on campus.
As it stands, it looks as if the college will be able to open up for
classes on April 14th. Please keep St. Peter and Gustavus in your thoughts
and prayers in the next few months, as the re-building process will be
quite difficult. Thanks.
Chris Stromberg
Zeta Epsilon
Gustavus Adolphus College
St. Peter, MN
