Just how big of a dumpster fire was Thursday’s blustery storm in western Minnesota?
Gnarly winds knocked out power, made roads near impassable and caused a “squirrely dumpster” to take not one but two small jaunts down a Moorhead street.
“It had a little playdate and then it had a little sleepover,” said Erica Werner, a bartender at Harold’s on Main, where the dumpster originated before howling winds swept it away on Dec. 18.
A passerby caught the runaway dumpster on video and shared it on a Fargo/Moorhead Facebook page on Thursday afternoon. Since then, Moorhead resident Tayla Michelle Henry’s video has garnered thousands of views and shares.
She filmed from the passenger side of a vehicle at the corner of Main Avenue SE. and 14th Street S.
0:24The clip shows the dumpster gliding across a parking lot and swiftly knocking over a short pole with pedestrian crosswalk buttons — sparing a white SUV the brunt of the collision — and then continuing to skate down Main Avenue and out of Henry’s view.
The clip captured the second time the dumpster was on the lam.
“When I came to work, the dumpster was already across the street hanging out. The city of Moorhead came along and pushed it back over to the bar,” said Dave McCloskey, who has worked at the appliance store Homemaker’s Villa for nearly three decades. “And about 10 to 15 minutes later, the auto place across the street from us was calling saying my car was hit.”
