What’s a tree worth? Bemidji area lost some 9 million trees, but doesn’t qualify for FEMA relief.

BEMIDJI - A month after a derecho ripped through the region, sparing lives but devastating the forest canopy, Bemidji area officials shared a rough estimate of how many trees fell victim to the storm.

Nine million.

Despite the vast acreage of knocked down and uprooted trees from the June 21 straight-line, hurricane-force winds, the damage falls short of federal disaster relief by $800,000, said Chris Muller, Beltrami County Emergency Management director. He said total damage in the county so far is $8.2 million.

“The personal impacts are what’s really difficult to assign a number to,” he said.

Justin Sherwood, the Bemidji fire chief and city’s emergency manager, said the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s formula doesn’t consider poverty (Beltrami is among the poorest counties in the state) or how trees factor into industry and way of life.

Bemidji is the birthplace of Paul Bunyan, the area has a rich logging history and a landscape defined by thick pines. Sherwood said FEMA can’t put a dollar figure on a tree, but losing millions of them will no doubt affect tourism and recreation.

“It frustrates me when this area in northern Minnesota, which is a regional hub that serves a ton of people, is pretty much brought down to its knees and that extra little assistance that we need to get over that hump is not brought here,” Sherwood said.

“Having just seen the horrific damage and the strength of the residents doing all they can to rebuild in Bemidji, if the public damage does not meet the federal threshold I will do all I can to advocate for the use of state funding,” Klobuchar said.

Bemidji and Beltrami County are under states of emergency until August. That will allow them to tap into state disaster relief funds to reimburse up to 75% of public infrastructure repairs. Muller said the state is not actively pursuing FEMA relief, which he said is based on population with a dollar amount assigned to every resident.

Homeowners have to foot the bill for tree removal when insurance doesn’t cover it unless a tree falls on a house.

Sherwood said Bemidji is about 85% through the first round of cleanup, with a second and allegedly final round in two weeks, but some homeowners are still awaiting appraisers before clearing their yard and beginning the process of replanting.

There are thousands of donated seedlings and thousands more sold by the county and state, which are also selling cords and acreage of downed trees to logging companies at auction.

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources doesn’t calculate tree loss per tree but by acreage, and the office said it’s still assessing damage through aerial images. The National Weather Service said it, too, is still studying data to grasp total tree devastation.

Local officials used their own calculation to come up with the 9 million estimate. “This formula was on the back of a napkin somewhere, and no one has it anymore,” said Brent Rud, environmental services director for Beltrami County.

Rud said they figured 40 trees lost per acre — a conservative average, he said, considering his home on a little more than an acre lost over 60 trees. They multiplied that by the derecho’s path of destruction (37 miles long x 10 miles wide = 370 square miles; 640 acres comprise a square mile) and arrived at more than 9 million.

They needed that alarming figure to determine how many trees they are going to sell. He said the county sells about 20,000 seedlings annually and they are now looking at selling 100,000.

Rud also serves as district manager for the Beltrami Soil and Water Conservation District, a self-governing body chartered by the state, but separate from the DNR. Its budget is partly generated from tree sales.

“We lost a lot of 50- to 100-year-old trees,” he said. “It will come back, but it just takes time.”

As for the storm’s impact on tourism, it’s too soon to tell, said Josh Peterson, executive director of Visit Bemidji. He said that June was a good month leading up to the storm.

“We’re still busy,” he said. “Hotels are full.”

But not only full of tourists. Contractors and insurance appraisers flocked to the area like arborists and linemen. By September, he said, the city will have a better sense of the storm’s toll on tourism.