{"id":3408,"date":"2014-08-17T16:14:54","date_gmt":"2014-08-17T22:14:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=3408"},"modified":"2014-08-18T14:32:46","modified_gmt":"2014-08-18T20:32:46","slug":"big-storm-pounds-baker-fair-but-springfield-show-goes-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2014\/08\/big-storm-pounds-baker-fair-but-springfield-show-goes-on\/","title":{"rendered":"Big storm pounds Baker fair, but Springfield show goes on"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Baker\"<\/a>

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.<\/p><\/div>\n

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 \u201ca once-in-a-lifetime\u201d experience.<\/p>\n

Springfield has posted\u00a0a video of the storm<\/a>\u00a0on his Facebook page Sunday. He titled the video \u201cTornado in Montana,\u201d but a meteorologist with the National Weather Service said there was no tornado, just a hard rain with some high winds.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how Springfield described the storm on his Facebook page: \u201cWe played a fair in Montana yesterday. Well, we didn\u2019t actually play because this happened. My amp and a couple of guitars are toast. So much for playing outdoor gigs in tornado country!\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 8 p.m. concert.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were watching the storm,\u201d Buerkle said. \u201cIt kept getting closer but we thought it was going to blow over. But by golly it didn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said a few drops of rain fell, \u201cthen it commenced to, just out of the blue, blowing, blowing, blowing. It was incredible. In all the years I\u2019ve been around, I don\u2019t remember seeing something like this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chuck Lee, the Disaster and Emergency Services director for Fallon County, said the winds were so strong and the rain so heavy \u201cthat it looked like a fog rolling in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked about Springfield\u2019s description of the storm as a tornado, Lee said, \u201cNo, no, no, there was no tornado.\u201d That was confirmed by Brian Tesar, the meterologist in Billings.<\/p>\n

He said the National Weather Service had issued some \u201csignificant weather advisories\u201d for the Baker area earlier Saturday.

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div><\/p>\n

\u201cThe\u00a0storms 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,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Buerkle said the airport in Baker recorded a wind gust of 64 mph.<\/p>\n

Buerkle also said Springfield\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Someone can be heard shouting \u201cOh! There it goes! Oh \u2013\u201d followed by a series of beeps evidently masking obscenities. A moment later another voice says, \u201cOh, no! Oh, no! Animals are gettin\u2019 out!\u201d<\/p>\n

Buerkle said all the animals \u2014 goats, sheep and \u201clittle horses\u201d \u2014were 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were very lucky not to have a major injury,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019d do it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was the most gracious offer you could get from a man,\u201d Buerkle said, \u201cbecause they could have just went home.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was not the ideal concert by any means,\u201d Buerkle said, \u201cbut they provided the opportunity to have a once-in-a-lifetime experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though there was \u201cincredible chaos\u201d on the fairgrounds when the storm hit, Buerkle said, there was no major damage.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll tell you what,\u201d he said. The Ferris wheel stayed up and the other rides stayed up. \u2026 That was a miracle in itself as well.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 \u201ca once-in-a-lifetime\u201d experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3410,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,14],"tags":[1188,1189,1186,1187,653,1185],"class_list":["post-3408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-montana","category-news","tag-baker","tag-brian-tesar","tag-chuck-lee","tag-fallon-county-fair","tag-national-weather-service","tag-rick-springfield","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3408\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}