By Matt Volz
The Associated Press
HELENA, Mont. — A rare tornado tore through a farmhouse and killed two people inside, leaving nothing but the house’s foundation and a few twisted vehicles as it swept through Montana’s remote and sparsely populated northeastern corner.
A teenage boy and a man in his 40s were killed on the farm when the tornado touched down Monday evening about 13 miles west of Reserve, Sheridan County Sheriff Patrick Ulrickson said. A 71-year-old woman was taken to a hospital in Plentywood and will be transported to Billings, he said.
Authorities declined to name the victims at the farm, saying they were still notifying family members. A nurse who answered at the hospital late Monday would not release any information about the woman’s injuries.
Don Simonsen of the National Weather Service in Glasgow said the tornado touched down west of Reserve between 7:15 p.m and 7:45 p.m. before crossing into North Dakota, where it weakened.
There also was at least one tornado reported about 20 miles south of Flaxville in Daniels County, Simonsen said.
‘A damn big one’
The weather service sent a team late Monday to assess the damage.
Medicine Lake resident Brandon French said he and five other men were watching the tornado from a hillside.
“It was a damn big one. It was a long way away, but you could see it clear as day,” French said. “It was like nothing we’ve ever seen before.”
French said they got a call from the owner of a bar in Reserve who had heard that a farm to the west had been hit. The men got into a pickup truck and were among the first to arrive.
The house, barn, lean-to and various buildings at the farm were simply gone, he said.
“There’s no houses, there’s no buildings, there’s nothing left,” French said. “The vehicles were all turned over, there was a pickup plowed into a tractor — it just wrapped the pickup around the tractor. You couldn’t peel it off.”
Devastating damage
Ulrickson said the damage was devastating — the house was completely gone from the foundation. The tornado also destroyed a mobile home and other buildings, he said.
“We had a Quonset hut that was crushed like a pop can,” he said.
Todd McCabe also headed to the farmhouse after receiving a call from the bar owner in Reserve. He said he arrived as five or six different neighbors were trying to reach the basement, where the three victims had apparently fled for cover.
With the house gone, the basement was just a hole in the ground covered with debris, he said Tuesday. The neighbors dug through rubble and found the woman, who he said was the teenager’s grandmother.
The woman was conscious, but the boy next to her was still, he said.
“The lady was trapped down there and we just tried to get the stuff off from on top of her,” McCabe said. “The boy was found right next to her. He was gone. The chimney fell on him and killed him.”
The body of the man, whom McCabe said was the woman’s nephew, was found outside the basement.
Tornado touched down in isolated area
Northeastern Montana is part of the Hi-Line, with vast stretches of plains and rolling wheat fields just south of the Canadian border. The area where the tornado touched down was “extremely isolated,” Fulkerson said.
Sheridan County’s population has been shrinking, with just over 3,200 people in 2008, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The main source of income for its residents is farming.
In North Dakota, a sheriff’s dispatcher in Divide County said they were no reports of storm damage or injuries.
Tornadoes are relatively rare in Montana, although on June 20, a tornado tore apart the state’s largest indoor arena.
The June tornado tore off the roof and some siding at the Rimrock Auto Arena in Billings and caused extensive damage to the interior. The arena was not in use at the time.
The tornado was the first large tornado to hit Billings in more than a half-century.
Hundreds of households also suffered damage from severe winds or hail, city officials said.
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Associated Press writers Thomas Peipert and Judith Kohler in Denver contributed to this report.