COMFREY — Robert Samuelson, caught outside when a devastatingly powerful tornado closed in on Comfrey on March 29, 1998, embodied what his hometown went through that afternoon and in the months that followed.
Samuelson, a 68-year-old farmer on that spring day a decade ago, was pummeled by debris, sliced by the shredded tin from farm sheds and crushed by the barn that collapsed on top of him.
“You’re whole body just gets kind of chewed up,” he said months later after emerging from an induced coma, his shattered right leg partially amputated.
His memories of March 29 ended with recollections of clearing drain intakes on his farmstead on the west edge of Comfrey. He was worried the dark clouds building in the west might bring a heavy rain but was unaware a tornado warning had been issued for Brown County, that a twister was cutting a path of destruction a mile and a half wide, and that it was taking aim at the small town.
Samuelson’s memories included nothing of the tornado, not even of the wind picking up. But he assumed he saw something scary because, when his son Pete found him, he was conscious and talking.
“My son said I’d said I was running,” he said in July 1998. “So I must have been running from something.”
For complete story, see the Monday, March 24, print edition of The Free Press or sign onto our e-edition.
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Photo courtesy of the Samuelson family
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Photo courtesy of the Samuelson family
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