Early Edition

Tornadoes Rip Through Granite Falls, Minnesota; 1 Dead, 14 Injured

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LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: One man is dead, 14 people are injured, and a big section of Granite Falls is in ruins after tornadoes ripped through that town in southwestern Minnesota.

Dave Hansen, of our affiliate KMSP, is there this morning. He joins us now to give us the very latest -- Dave.

DAVE HANSEN, KMSP REPORTER: Good morning, Leon.

We are at one of the worst parts of destruction right here. You can see the Minnesota National Guard right here. They are making sure that not very many people get inside here. They are actually requiring that folks actually get a number, as many of the evacuees come back in after they were told to leave last night. More about the destruction over here. You can see this semi-tractor trailer, well, what is left of one right over here.

The driver apparently got out of that last night, just a few moments before this twister came through, and basically twisted it inside and out.

We can see this grain elevator right over here, the top of this thing was sheered off, and one of those tanks over there just obliterated, and it is over in this guys lawn over here, about 14 antique cars that he had over too, most of them damaged pretty bad.

Let's take a look at some of that damage from last night. Now, authorities tell us that they had about 10 minutes warning before these twisters, this one really bad twister showed up. Apparently, they blew their warning siren twice. There were five tornadoes dancing near the town last night just before 7:00. One blasted through town and hit a 30-block area, and just really knocked a number of buildings flat.

As you said, Leon, one person dead, slightly more than a dozen people hurt in this whole thing. The whole silver lining in this thing, if there is one at this point is the fact that this town has kind of gone through a number of disasters here. Over the past couple of years, they had some flooding on the south side three years ago; they had some hail damage over here on the west side earlier this spring. A lot of the people didn't go through the expense of fixing their homes. They were kind of putting it off. And many of those people that didn't do that, well, their homes were damaged even worse this time. So now they can get both repairs done at one time.

We are told that about 350 homes and businesses were damaged. We are not sure how many were destroyed. Authorities are hoping to have some more figures a little later on today. No damage estimates at this point. At this point, people are just trying to get back in in daylight and take a closer look at what happened last night -- Leon.

HARRIS: All right, thanks, Dave Hansen, of KMSP, thanks much. No doubt, that 10-minute warning saved some lives.

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