AURORA – Aurora residents grappled with their worst storm in nearly two decades when a derecho roared through Brookings County Thursday night.
Wind gusts that nearly reached 80 mph left old-growth trees in the central part of town uprooted, while rail cars near the outskirts of town were toppled. The city was also left without running water for more than 24 hours and was without clean drinking water until Sunday morning.
“The biggest struggle was we were out of power just like Brookings was, but the thing that really affected us was we lost water,” Aurora Mayor Josh Jones said. “We didn’t have water until late Friday night.”
Aurora gets its water from Brookings, and because power runs the water pumps between the two towns, when the power shut off so did the water. The backup generators used in Brookings weren’t strong enough to pump the water to Aurora.
Aurora did have reserve water, around 50,000 gallons in its water tower, but by Friday morning, that was bone-dry, leaving the city completely out of water. City officials discovered a leak in one of the pipes which, on top of water usage on Thursday night, drained every last bit of water from the tower.
“We had a couple major water leaks that were discovered,” Jones said. “We knew something was up because we know Aurora as a whole could never have used 50,000 gallons of water overnight.”
The city brought in porta-potties for residents to use and pallets of bottled water for drinking. The city also bought a pallet of gallon water jugs for people to use for cooking.
“You can live without electricity, but not having running water for 12 hours, that’s a struggle,” Jones said.
Once Brookings got the majority of its power back Friday night, running water resumed in Aurora. However, because the lines ran dry, the water had to be sent to Pierre and tested for bacteria. This city subsequently issued a boil water advisory, which instructed people to boil their water before consuming it. This meant that all water used for drinking, eating or even brushing teeth first needed to be boiled for at least three minutes.
On Sunday morning, test results came back clean, and residents were able to consume water safely again. The water tower was also refilled.
“You really don’t realize how difficult it is when you don’t have running water in your house,” Jones said.
There were two gas leaks in Aurora as a result of the storm, but those have been fixed.
No serious injuries were sustained from the storm, but a few cars overturned, leading to some minor injuries, Jones said. The Aurora Fire Department responded to a semi that rolled on U.S. Highway 14 as well as few other calls from people trapped in their cars.
On top of the water issue, a significant amount of trees were uprooted in town. Some residents sustained some property damage, and nearly all fencing was lost.
“Some homes sustained some pretty good roof damage – some shingles,” Jones said. “I would say generally overall some minor to medium damage to homes. There were a few homes that had trees come down on top of them that did sustain significant damage. I would say a handful of houses sustained structural type damage, mostly from trees.”
A large crew of volunteers helped with cleanup, Jones said.
“We went around and helped everyone who needed help cutting down trees to help get them back to where they could function,” Jones said.
The city also cleared off the roads and highways that were blocked by trees. The crew worked all day Friday, Saturday and then Sunday morning, clearing off and cleaning up as much as they could.
“We made a decision that we have to get back to a little bit of normalcy,” Jones said. “There’s stuff that we have to do (as a city), but we’re going to plug away at it for the next two weeks.”
Jones is hopeful that the City of Brookings or Brookings County will lend some assistance in the cleanup, as Aurora only has two maintenance employees.
Aurora brought in two big dumpsters where residents can drop off more household debris. Those are in the city park and will be emptied at some point. The city will keep those in the park for a few more days.
Residents should continue to put broken trees and branches on the curb. The city will eventually get to them, but it will take some time to get to everyone, Jones said.
“It really showed the small-town togetherness,” Jones said. “As we cleaned one person’s yard, they would move over to whoever else needed help. It would was a big group of people who moved around town helping people out.”
Contact Addison DeHaven at adehaven@brookingsregister.com.
