Clean up continues in Kerrobert after hail storm

Life is slowly returning to normal in Kerrobert after a nasty summer storm ripped through.

The extreme weather broke windows, damaged siding and snapped trees on Wednesday.

Tammy Krahn, owner of Kerrobert Bakery and Coffee Bar, left town that day just before the storm for a delivery in nearby Luseland. When she got back, she was shocked by what she saw.

“We see hail on the ground and then all of a sudden we see the trees are really stripped and some have fallen over and branches torn off. Then you start looking at the buildings and you see the siding damage and windows blown out,” Krahn said.

That’s when she started to worry about the bakery and her house. They first checked the business, which had some broken windows. Her home had some siding damage. 

“I was very thankful there was no windows broken at home,” she said.

“Almost everybody was affected.”

Glass store owner says repair job will be massive

This week’s freak hailstorm in Kerrobert means long hours for the owner of a nearby glass repair shop.

Brett Sautner owns Kindersley Glass.  He said Friday that they’ve already begun working on some of the vehicles damaged by massive hailstones that pelted Kerrobert on Wednesday.

Sautner went to Kerrobert the day after the storm to help people secure buildings and get the ball rolling on quotes for repairs.

“It looks like a bomb went off. It honestly does. I’ve never seen anything like it. Every south and west side of every house, every roof, every vehicle — everything is damaged,” he said

Sautner works with glass and is not an expert on siding, roof or eavestrough repair. But he said that having seen the town, he believes getting everything fixed will run into the millions of dollars.

While each case is different, Sautner said most windows on a home cost between $500 and $1000 to fix or replace.

“I mean, there’s probably a thousand windows that have to be fixed. I mean, you don’t know until you get to each (building), but it’s huge,” he said.

Sautner said he and his staff will keep doing what they can to speed up the process. He estimated two weeks would be the earliest new glass could start going into buildings, as homeowners will need to wait for insurance companies to process claims.

“I may as well have them quoted. If I get it, that’s fine. Then we can order and get it going and then we can get ahead of this and get it done as quick as we can. Because winter’s coming. So (we’ve) got to get the stuff that needs to be done for sure before winter done,” he said.

Sautner said that adding the work from the disaster on top of his regular business has him looking at possibly hiring more staff.

-with files from News Talk Radio’s Chris Carr and Bryn Levy

ckomnews@rawlco.com

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