A still image from a video posted by Rick Springfield shows the awning over a petting zoo at the Fallon County Fair in Baker getting blown away.
A huge windstorm nearly canceled a show by Rick Springfield at the Fallon County Fair in Baker on Saturday, but an improvised concert was quickly arranged and became “a once-in-a-lifetime” experience.
Springfield has posted a video of the storm on his Facebook page Sunday. He titled the video “Tornado in Montana,” but a meteorologist with the National Weather Service said there was no tornado, just a hard rain with some high winds.
Here’s how Springfield described the storm on his Facebook page: “We played a fair in Montana yesterday. Well, we didn’t actually play because this happened. My amp and a couple of guitars are toast. So much for playing outdoor gigs in tornado country!”
Don Buerkle, fair board chairman, said the storm hit about 6 p.m., just before what was to have been a sound check for Springfield’s 8 p.m. concert.
“We were watching the storm,” Buerkle said. “It kept getting closer but we thought it was going to blow over. But by golly it didn’t.”
He said a few drops of rain fell, “then it commenced to, just out of the blue, blowing, blowing, blowing. It was incredible. In all the years I’ve been around, I don’t remember seeing something like this.”
Chuck Lee, the Disaster and Emergency Services director for Fallon County, said the winds were so strong and the rain so heavy “that it looked like a fog rolling in.”
Asked about Springfield’s description of the storm as a tornado, Lee said, “No, no, no, there was no tornado.” That was confirmed by Brian Tesar, the meterologist in Billings.
He said the National Weather Service had issued some “significant weather advisories” for the Baker area earlier Saturday.
“The storms we were watching just had 50-mile-an-hour winds and heavy rains, but unfortunately developed into a strong line of storms that produced that wind,” he said.
Buerkle said the airport in Baker recorded a wind gust of 64 mph.
Buerkle also said Springfield’s video was shot from inside a trailer about 50 feet from the stage, looking toward the midway. It is raining and blowing and suddenly a big striped awning, which was over the petting zoo, is lifted off the ground and goes tumbling away.
Someone can be heard shouting “Oh! There it goes! Oh –” followed by a series of beeps evidently masking obscenities. A moment later another voice says, “Oh, no! Oh, no! Animals are gettin’ out!”
Buerkle said all the animals — goats, sheep and “little horses” —were rounded up. As for injuries, he said one young woman needed four or five stitches and there were reports of a couple of other minor injuries.
“We were very lucky not to have a major injury,” he said.
The heavy rains soaked the sound board and ruined eight amplifiers, Buerkle said, and it looked as though there would be no concert. He said he was standing on the stage talking to Springfield when the singer offered to play an acoustic show on the patio of a bar in Baker.
Buerkle said he really wanted to keep the show on the fairgrounds, to be fair to the 900 or so people who had bought tickets.
Just then, the sound man, Walt Losinski, the owner of Midnight Express, in Beach, N.D., said he had salvaged enough equipment to put on a show, though not on the main stage and without any of the expensive light system, which was not working. Springfield said he’d do it.
“That was the most gracious offer you could get from a man,” Buerkle said, “because they could have just went home.”
They ended up moving the concert to a small stage in a courtyard in the center of the fairgrounds. Springfield and his band started about 9 and played for an hour.
“It was not the ideal concert by any means,” Buerkle said, “but they provided the opportunity to have a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”
Though there was “incredible chaos” on the fairgrounds when the storm hit, Buerkle said, there was no major damage.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said. The Ferris wheel stayed up and the other rides stayed up. … That was a miracle in itself as well.”
