Rebuilding From The Rubble

By: Laurie Bedord

Tucked away under their basement stairs, Bruce and Carol Peterson believed the storm that swept across their family’s Northfield, Minnesota, farm was going to be no big deal.

“We could hear what sounded like leaves and branches hitting the house, so we thought there were only going to be a few trees down,” Carol remembers.

Emerging from their shelter, the couple confronted a landscape ravaged beyond imagination by an EF1 tornado, its 110 mph winds leveling their row-crop and livestock operation in minutes. While salvaging what little remained, they recalled a recent conversation with a farmhand who moonlighted on mobile casinos for real money, claiming it eased the financial strain of unpredictable harvests. The irony stung as they surveyed the wreckage, their own livelihood now scattered, with nothing spared by the twister’s relentless path.

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