Three deer crossed the road at Lake Herman State Park on Saturday and District Park Manager John Bame noted another blessing. The deer were enjoying the new foliage to which they had access due to all the downed trees.
With extensive damage to the park as a result of Thursday’s storm, which the National Weather Service is now calling a derecho, he was – characteristically – focusing on the positive even as events for the week were either canceled or put on hold as the cleanup effort moves forward.
At the top of Bame’s list was one simple fact: no lives were lost. The summer intern’s crushed camper shows how close the park came to suffering a tragedy.
On Thursday afternoon, four Game, Fish and Parks conservation officers were at the park shop collecting tails as part of the department’s Nest Predator Bounty Program. Bame, aware of the storm moving in, invited them and summer interns to shelter at the park residence.
“It was a dead calm. Then, it was like a wall of air hit you,” he said.
As they covered the short distance from the shop to the residence, the sound was so overwhelming they couldn’t talk.
“We had a volunteer host in the campground and one camper,” Bame recalled.
They couldn’t get to the residence because high winds had snapped off the wall of trees along the east side of the access road. Bame advised them to go to the upper campground where a concrete shower house offered the most protection.
And then, they waited.
“It honestly felt like forever, but it was probably just 30 minutes,” Bame said.
When they emerged, it was to blocked roads and a changed landscape, but Bame was not fully aware of the damage at that point. He had one simple priority – to make sure everyone in the park was safe.
“We grabbed first-aid kits and assessed the situation,” he indicated, gratitude for what he found apparent in his voice. “No one got hurt, which was fantastic.”
The campground host’s RV sustained some damage. The camper being used by the summer maintenance intern had sustained some damage, but not as much as the network of downed trees surrounding it suggested had been possible.
The camper being used by the other summer intern was totally destroyed.
“I’m so glad she was up at our house,” Bame said.
With the assessment done, everyone at the park strapped on chaps and grabbed chainsaws.
Bame’s second priority was getting everyone out of the park, which was not safe due to the widespread damage. Also, the conservation officers, who are certified law enforcement officers in South Dakota, were needed elsewhere.
“Dispatch was calling, ‘Help, help, help’,” Bame recalled.
For the remaining hour of daylight, they worked to clear the roads and were successful helping everyone exit the park.
By the next day, others were on the scene to help, including Scott Simpson, director of Parks and Recreation for the state Department of Game, Fish and Parks. Bame said he got on the phone and started making calls to line up help.
“There’s a lot of years of trees gone,” Bame observed on Saturday as he drove through the park. “It takes a lot of years to forest a campground.”
The lower campground and the trail system were hardest hit. The tree canopy was nearly decimated. In one area, only six of 20 mature cottonwoods remain standing. Throughout the park, trees were uprooted or torn apart, the warm cream color of the living tree’s core exposed like a gaping wound.
On Saturday, a crew from the South Dakota Wildland Fire Division of the state Department of Public Safety, operating under the state Office of Emergency Management, were on site working on the cleanup which had begun on Friday with the habitat crew from the Sioux Falls regional office of GFP. The 33-member crew, which was divided into three groups, worked to clear the lower campground, the upper campground and the trail system.
“The crews that are here are excited for the opportunity to assist,” said Mike Reed, district manager for the Rapid City crew.
Normally, they clean up after a fire, but they have been trained to operate safely in a hazard situation such as what they encountered at Lake Herman. Not only do the men and women on the crew learn how to handle equipment safely, but they also learn how to manage situations in which the trees are in a tangled mess as they were at Lake Herman.
“We even bring a safety officer with us to make sure we do everything right,” Reed said.
He explained that cutting a single tree out of an entangled group of felled trees could change the tension of the mass in such a way that other trees could shift unpredictably, leading to injury or death.
“There are a lot of ugly things that can happen,” Reed observed, adding that tree hazards are among the leading cause of death among wildland firefighters.
The Wildland Fire crew is expected to be at Lake Herman for three days before moving on to Oakwood Lakes State Park, which also sustained massive damage. Reed noted that in a situation like this, though, plans are subject to change.
Later in the week, other GFP crews are expected to come in with wood chippers and continue the work which has begun. Bame anticipates that crews will be on the scene for at least a week.
He has no idea when Lake Herman State Park will reopen to the public, primarily because safety is a first concern. He doesn’t know whether the park will be able to participate in the State Parks Open House and Free Fishing Weekend, sponsored each year by SDGFP and scheduled this year for May 20-22. He doesn’t know whether the park can host Casting for Kids, as it has in the past.
“You just take it day by day,” he said. Bame is doing so by counting blessings.
“The park is still here,” Bame said, noting the foundational blessing upon which everything else rests. None of the park’s infrastructure – the playgrounds, picnic shelters, cabins or comfort stations – sustained any damage.
No lives were lost or injuries sustained, which is a point to which Bame returns over and over – as though it’s a miracle in the midst of the devastation. And even the tree loss he sees as an opportunity.
“I guess we have a lot of trees to plant,” Bame said.
