Update: Can you help? Minnesota tornadoes -- devastating... and only about 5 miles from my house

Update: My original post and the story about the tornadoes is below the red font and the dotted line. Directly below, however, you'll find some updates...




UPDATE 6/23: I'm putting together a "firesale" WSO as well as a "silent auction" to benefit the people in my community who've lost everything. I know people who don't even have a toothbrush left (much less a place to live).

Can you help?

Do you have any products or services you'd be willing to donate to the either the firesale or the auction? If you provide services like writing, you could offer something like PLR content. Otherwise, if it doesn't work to create a product, then you may consider donating your time (e.g., we'll auction off one of your services to the highest bidder).

PM me now to let me know how many copies of your product or service you'd be willing to donate. Thanks!

Also, would you be willing to help spread the word once it's launched? If so, please PM me.

Anything helps.




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Update 6/24: If you have a blogging related bonus, and you're willing to give away about 1000 copies of it, please check out what Andy Fletcher and John Taylor are doing:

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...h-charity.html

For all other products you're interested in donating, please contact me. You can donate one product that I auction off... or donate an "unlimited" number that I include in a firesale. Thanks!




BTW, if you'd like to help these good folks immediately, you can send a donation directly to the Wadena Disaster Recovery fund:

City of Wadena Disaster Recovery | Mid-Central Federal Savings Bank

This small community lost their community recreation building, their pool, their bus garage (and buses), their high school... and let's not even talk about all the homes that were destroyed or damaged.




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Holy smokes. Have you folks caught the coverage about the MN tornadoes that blew through here on Thursday? The most devastating ones were within about five miles of my house. Lots of reporters (CNN, FOX, NBC, etc) parked out in the town of Wadena because it suffered so much damage. That's the town where I do all my grocery shopping.

I'm just going to cut and paste an email I sent to friends that recounts some of the damage I saw this weekend...



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I've seen some of the damage up close and personal now. On Friday we took the long way to avoid the damage, since we knew there would be lots of road closures. Nonetheless, we hit some damage out in the rural areas. And boy was it unbelievable.

About 10 or 15 miles from here we hit a spot on the road where EVERY power line pole was down for about a mile stretch. Trees of course were down. Those tree that were standing had metal twisted into them. Fortunately there were only a few homes on this particular stretch of the road, but you could see that they had sustained major damage (roofs off, outbuildings and barns in poor shape or even leveled, etc).

Yesterday we drove through Wadena -- but just the main highway. Which actually I was quite happy about that, because I knew this main road mainly had businesses on it. No way did I want to drive into the residential areas, where hundreds of homes were destroyed. That would have made me sick to see it. (People were even finding headstones from a local cemetery in their backyards, if that gives you an idea of the power of this storm!)

But even that little stretch of road we drove was unbelievable. It truly did look like a war zone.

Big industrial buildings just ripped to shreds. Smaller buildings simply gone. Powerline poles down. Trees gone. A few that were still standing had their tops shaved off. A school bus garage demolished, with one of it's buses thrown clear across the road. Clearly that bus had been quite high in the air before it came back down, because it was just flattened.

This was a multi-vortex, multi-tornado storm. So once we got out of town a few miles we ran into another place in the country were trees were gone or shaved off, buildings were destroyed etc. As near as we could tell, that storm dropped a destructive funnel about 5 miles from our house. So the storm was even closer than we thought!

Sadly, we have friends who lost their house maybe 7 miles from here. They lost everything. Someone found even some of their pictures 15 miles away. All buildings in their yard were leveled.

When the storm came they hit their basement. Except the tornado apparently destroyed the house and then it even lifted the basement ceiling and started dumping debris into their basement -- like a riding lawnmower -- where they were huddled. Rodney suffered a broken leg in two places and other injuries. Sally had a lot of bumps and bruises. So they both ended up in the hospital for a night or two.


All in all, this is just unbelievable. I can't even describe what it's like to see the town and country in shambles like this. It makes you really count your blessings.

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Crazy. I just can't wrap my head around what I've seen.

Becky