Severe thunderstorms early Thursday brought strong winds and a heavy downpour of rain to the Brainerd lakes area, downing hundreds of trees and leaving thousands of people without power.
The storms left more than 7,000 Crow Wing Power households without power in the Brainerd lakes area, with a concentration of outages surrounding Brainerd/Baxter from Motley, Fort Ripley, Nokay Lake to Nisswa.
Brainerd residents also lost water after the storm knocked out a pump, and Baxter's substation on Southdale was out.
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Char Kinzar of Crow Wing Power said crews were waiting for two transmission companies to repair their lines so the substations could be fed again. The transmission lines are owned by Minnesota Power and Great River Energy and are the main large power source for the substations. When the substations are back up and running, Kinzar said they will need people to call in their power outage again, because it will give them a true picture about who is really out of power.
Trees fell onto large transmission lines, which is a rare occurrence, Kinzar said.
Two gables of a roof caved in on one of the apartments at Cypress Court in Baxter. No injuries were reported. There also was a Pillager School District school bus and a vehicle that crashed on Highway 210, east of Pillager. There were 17 students on the bus, none were injured. The driver had minor injuries.
Manion Lumber and Truss in Pillager lost one of their lumber sheds in the storm and the city also had no power.
Many people were busy cutting up the trees that had fallen on their driveways and yard throughout the morning.
Essentia Health Clinics in Baxter, Brainerd and Pillager closed Thursday because of limited water and no power.
