Some Faribault residents long held the belief that tornados wouldn’t strike the town, because it’s where two rivers meet. Local experts say this is absolutely not true, as demonstrated in 2018.
The warm winter seems to have had minimal impact on severe weather, as Rice County Skywarn Social Media Director Brian Klier noted it’s been an average tornado season so far in the United States. Still, Faribault Fire Chief Dusty Dienst and Rice County Emergency Preparedness Director Joe Johnson said it’s imperative to be aware of any possible severe weather and have a plan in the event that severe weather should arise.
The main thing both Dienst and Johnson stressed is for Rice County residents to sign up for the Everbridge Emergency Alert Notification System, which is explained in the sidebar.
“I don’t know if true that people think that their phone’s just automatically going to go off and tell them when there’s something bad going on,” Dienst said. “It will if it’s bad enough. Like a tornado or a tornado warning, everybody’s smartphone will go off. But anything less than that, you have to be signed up to a notification system in order to get that alert.”
Klier noted that Rice County sits on the northeast edge of Tornado Alley, which includes South Dakota, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Nebraska and parts of southern Minnesota.
“This is an area, where warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico collides with cold, dry air from Canada, that tornadoes like best,” he said. “Locally, it’s these two types of air mixing together and creating updrafts that can start rotating to form tornadoes.”
When the conditions are prime for a tornado, a tornado watch is issued. A tornado warning means there actually is or is about to be a tornado. Klier and Dienst both gave the example of a taco.
“You don’t have a taco yet, but you have prepared and laid everything out to make a taco,” Klier said. “This is a ‘taco watch,’ and much is the same with a tornado watch. All your ingredients to make a tornado are prepared and laid out, but you don’t have a tornado yet. The ‘warning’ is when a tornado is actually occurring or imminent.”
Tornado touchdown
When a tornado touches down, having a predetermined plan can be the difference between life and death.
“Take some time to understand what the weather is going to be like every single day at the beginning of the day so you can plan for what may happen, typically in the afternoon,” Dienst said. He suggested the local media or a weather app.
“Be able to work your schedule around those times if you’re doing outdoor activities and have a contingency plan,” he said. “At around the time when they’re predicting things to ramp up, pay closer attention to the weather.”
Rice County Skywarn is consistently up-to-date on possible storm activity or other important weather information. To prepare even further ahead of time, Klier said the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association Storm Prediction Center (spc.noaa.gov) and the National Weather Service (weather.gov) can come in handy.
Some of the important items to have include a weather radio, a cellphone and a way to charge it if possible. Dienst and Johnson both recommend keeping an emergency kit with enough food, water and anything else one might need to sustain themselves for three days.
They also said, if someone is driving and a tornado is headed for them, they should pull over, get out and find a low area to take cover.
“You’re hopefully not going to be there very long,” Dienst said. “So get out of the car. Don’t try to outrun it. If you actually can see it and you can stay away from it, slow down or let it pass. That’s fine, but do not try to outrun it.”
A basement or bathroom can serve as a sturdy shelter for those in their house or workplace during a tornado. However, people in especially vulnerable homes, like manufactured homes, could be put at risk.
Dienst explained that, at least in Faribault, residents of manufactured-home parks receive an alert in April that informs them of the nearest shelter in whatever language they speak. One member of the park is the designated key-holder and can help others get into the nearest school, which serve as shelters during severe weather.
Disaster response
Johnson joined the county as emergency-preparedness director on April 29, after spending 24 years working as a firefighter and EMT. After getting his paramedic certification, he worked in a number of places before ultimately landing in Northfield in 2007.
Around 2015, Johnson moved to his wife’s family farm outside of Nerstrand, where he joined the local fire squad. It only took a few years for him to be promoted to chief.
“I had a little bit more experience with larger-scale incidents and stuff like that,” he said. “And that’s my full-time job. Volunteer firefighters are great because you have people that are builders and farmers and all this stuff, a lot of people that know different things. My specialty is emergency services, so I kind of slid right into that role.”
Notably, Johnson served as part of the emergency-preparedness team in the metro during the civil unrest in the summer of 2020 and during the Super Bowl in 2018.
“It was towards the end of the unrest so I didn’t get a lot of the Minneapolis stuff,” he said. “Hennepin County really took care of all of the Minneapolis stuff because they know that area. So I didn’t get a lot of involvement, but the planning part was a really good learning experience. In the metro region, we did a lot of drills and we’d come up with plans to respond to those major incidents.”
While one might assume emergencies are completely different in the metro than here, he said a lot of the response techniques are universal.
“Preparing and responding to emergencies are very similar, no matter where you are,” he said. “You could say that there’d be different flavors.”
On the flip side, there are some nuances he said will take some getting used to, like the population differences and certain procedure within the county offices.
“Obviously I have a lot of experience responding to emergencies and overseeing emergencies,” he said. “But there are aspects of this position that I’m still learning. I’ve attended classes; I’ve done everything. But it’s still a new position.”
As the new director for Rice County, he’ll be in charge of coordinating mutual aid in disasters, like the 2018 tornados.
“So my role in this position would be … to help coordinate the resources to respond to those areas,” he said. “If Nerstrand Fire says ‘We’re out of resources. We need XYZ.’ My job is to help facilitate that across the region and call on our mutual-aid partners and surrounding counties to help get those resources.”
He also is in charge of securing funding for the cleanup, specifically so that expense doesn’t fall on the taxpayer.
River myth
As he wrapped up, Johnson also mentioned the myth that tornados don’t strike where two rivers meet. Dienst and Klier also said they’ve heard this many times from people. All three dispelled the notion.
“There’s no old wives’ tale that’s gonna stop a tornado,” Johnson said.
Klier said 2018 helped fight that myth.
“The multiple tornadoes that ripped through Rice County on Sept. 20, 2018, and the Faribault Airport in particular, is evidence that tornadoes are very real here,” Klier said. “Their ground path can go for miles, and they be quite strong even in southern Minnesota.”
Dienst also said 2018 helped to get people to stop believing the myth.
“2018 kind of took care of that idea that we don’t have tornadoes in Faribault because we have two rivers coming together here,” he said. “That is not a thing.”
Dienst finished by noting that outdoor-warning sirens can mean a lot of things, not just tornados.
“Use a local media outlet to figure out why the sirens are going off,” he said. “Don’t just assume it’s a tornado. That siren is just a notification for you to use any way you can to figure out what’s going on.”
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