Ladysmith digs out, looks to Siren

One of the first calls for help from Ladysmith (pop. 4,000), after the Labor Day tornado swept through the Rusk County seat, went to Bobbi Sichta, emergency management services director in Burnett County, 100 miles northwest.

She’s spent the last 15 months coordinating the rebuilding of Siren, which was hit by a tornado on June 19, 2001.

The most important advice she shared with Ladysmith officials is this: “Recovery is more difficult than the (emergency) response. It’s more complicated than simply replacing damaged homes and businesses, she said. “You’re rebuilding lives, and coordination is absolutely key from Day 1.”

As Ladysmith begins the second month in its recovery, the response is largely complete, and the recovery phase is underway. The physical toll: a hundred buildings — 40 businesses and 60 homes — were destroyed or sustained major damage. Unlike Burnett County, most of the damage in Ladysmith is concentrated in a 16-block area, with the downtown business district hit hardest.

Damage to commercial, residential and public infrastructure in Ladysmith is estimated at $21 million.

Because the damage was localized, there’s just one layer of government, Sichta said, but in Burnett County, Siren and six surrounding townships were involved.

Other factors can help to speed Ladysmith’s recovery, as well.

Mostly built in the 1920s, the central business district was showing its age with little recent investment. “A lot of people are looking at this as an opportunity, a chance for improvements with new buildings,” said Andy Albarado, Rusk County Development’s director. In all, 91 businesses sustained damage. Two-thirds of those owners turned out for an informational meeting during Week 3 of the cleanup and only four said they won’t reopen, he said.

The coordination that Sichta said is key to rebuilding lives also is off to a faster start than was the case in Siren.

A principal vehicle for that coordination — a “Communication Interface Connection” committee — was operational by Week 3. “We didn’t have that in place until the sixth or seventh week,” Sichta said.

Albarado and Ladysmith city administrator Al Christianson are meeting nearly daily, a tactic modeled on what worked in Burnett County. They’ve assigned a case manager to every effected resident and business to help them through the disaster response bureaucracy, assisting with temporary housing and federal, low-interest disaster loans.

After that will come navigational help with local permits and zoning.

“Right now, we’re in a kind of lull,” Christianson said on Sept. 26, with effected businesses and residents awaiting responses to their insurance claims.

While the recovery began more slowly in Siren, the results there 15 months later are startling.

Beyond new construction, there’s little evidence of the tornado that cut an eight-block, west-to-east swath through the village, destroying 205 homes and 34 businesses.

New commercial buildings have sprung up along state Hwy. 35, the north-south thoroughfare and along Main Street. Many of those new buildings carry a common “Northwoods” exterior design theme marked by cedar siding and split fieldstone. That theme is voluntary.

Spurring Siren’s recovery is a building boomlet that already was underway with the discovery of the vacation community by Twin Cities tourists and emigres.

Minneapolis transplants Jim and Peggy Tolbert had opened their Chattering Squirrel Coffee Cafe just a year earlier when the tornado swept through. “The slab was the only thing left,” Jim said.

Typical of Siren’s new attitude, the Tolberts doubled the size of the coffee shop and added a second business, Acorn Pantry, specializing in pantry wares generally not available in Burnett County. “We got a second chance to fix the (design) problems we made the first time around,” he said. How’s business: “Our bad days are better than the good days used to be,” he said.

Natives Kent Boyer and his sister Kara Alden displayed that same unbeatable spirit. The second generation owners of a Dairy Queen franchise had operated a new store on Hwy. 35 for less than a month when the 2001 tornado wiped them out. They rebuilt and reopened at the same site just five months later.

“Your choices are to rebuild or go to work for someone else,” Boyer said simply.

Greg and Sue Hunter were planning to remodel their restaurant and bar, The Pour House, when the tornado gave them a “clean slate,” Sue said.

With their insurance settlement and a FEMA-backed SBA loan, they’ve invested about $750,000, doubling the size of their lounge, expanding both the restaurant and an off-sale store and adding a meeting room. They capped the project off with that “northwoods” exterior theme and a knotty pine interior decor.

“Once we got over the shock, the chance to start over was exciting,” Sue said.

Siren’s largest manufacturer, North States Industries, also chose to rebuild, and has expanded its work force.

The Blaine, MN-based injection molding company produces child gates, bird feeders and other plastic items in Siren for mass retailers such as Wal-Mart, Kmart and Target. The Siren operation generated $19 million in sales last year, said plant manager Mike Herrick. Its 70 employees were paid during the four-month shutdown while the plant was rebuilt. And it’s operating now with 20 more employees, he said.

Businesses and homeowners who weren’t in the tornado’s path haven’t escaped its aftermath. Society Insurance, the state’s No. 1 property-casualty insurer, has since decided not to renew any policies in the Siren area, which also was hit Aug. 8, 1999 by a hail storm.

Two other carriers, General Casualty and West Bend Mutual followed with the same decision, said Rick Anderson, president of Fishbowl Insurance Agency with offices in Siren, Webster and Minong.

It’s left him and other agents there caught between carriers and irate policy holders who were cancelled, even though they didn’t file claims.

“Storms are suddenly my fault,” he said. “We’re scouring the marketplace” to find new carriers, he said.