editorials

There was a "State of Emergency'' notice taped to the front door of Hugo City Hall Tuesday morning, but there were many signs that everything was under control.

Only two days after a devastating Memorial Day weekend tornado changed lives in this fast-growing community forever, a very Minnesota sense of order took hold. Just south of the most heavily damaged neighborhood, laughing children returned to Oneka Elementary, a beautiful new school building that served as a shelter and command center over the weekend.

Those emergency operations were moved from the school to City Hall, where employees patiently took a steady stream of phone calls and walk-in offers from would-be volunteers. Minnesota may be more politically and socially fragmented today than ever before, but when tragedy hits we know how to pull together.

Hugo is like a lot of exurban communities where you can still buy a nice house on a large lot for a decent price. The neighbors are likely to be hard-working, family-oriented people drawn to the relatively rural lifestyle still found in this city just 20 miles north of downtown St. Paul.

In recent years they've put down roots in nice subdivisions called Victor Gardens, Heritage Ponds and Waters Edge, where a mix of blue- and white-collar families have found their dream homes and built a strong community. Inspiring stories of neighbors helping neighbors, often heroically, were told again and again in the wake of the storm.

On an unfairly cold and windy Tuesday morning, as exhausted families continued to pick through the debris for valuables, Hugo was ready for some help from the rest of us. For the first time, trained volunteers were allowed to join the cleanup effort.

Don Anderson and the Minnesota United Methodist Disaster Response Team arrived before noon, parking a trailer on an especially hard-hit block of 159th Street North. They were followed minutes later by a team from Nechama, a Jewish disaster-response group.

Anderson, a 76-year-old retired electrical engineer from Northfield, is a veteran of the Methodist group who made five trips south to help Katrina victims. "We try to make order out of the chaos,'' he said.

Order had been restored in Hugo by the time Anderson and his team arrived, but there was plenty of work to do. Not far from the Methodists' trailer, volunteers and workers kept a respectful distance from families still coming to terms with what they'd lost. A young girl lifted a teddy bear from the rubble where her house had stood. A local builder pointed to the property where 2-year-old Nathaniel Prindle was killed and several family members were injured.

A few blocks away, a homeowner whose property didn't appear to be damaged had left unattended a table of freebies: pairs of work gloves, rakes, cookies and water. That spirit of giving, with no strings attached, is what the people of Hugo need now from all of their Minnesota neighbors.