It’s been five days since a fast-moving storm cut a swath of destruction through parts of the Rainbow Valley Campground in Bayfield. “I’ve got over 100 trees destroyed. They were knocked down from one end of the property to the other,” says Rainbow Valley Campground Owner, Gary Brandon. Around 5:45 a.m. on Friday, July 3, Brandon was woken up by a loud crack of thunder, and then text messages from his campers, that the 100-site seasonal trailer park had been hit hard by the storm. “I couldn’t even go down the hill. It was blocked off completely. We had to move our way in, step by step,” he said. PHOTO GALLERY: Bayfield Storm Damage Five days later, the campground remains closed as the damage is still quite evident. About 40 trailers suffered damage, said Brandon. Several still have trees and limbs, crushing their roofs. “I can’t open the park until I get some of the hangers out of the trees, and then they’ll be able to start cleaning up their personal lots,” he added. Thankfully, no one was injured, said Brandon. But the cleanup will likely take weeks. “If it had been one day later, all the kids would have been out of school, and they’d have had their first long weekend of the summer, and they’d have been here. It could have been so much worse,” he said. Due to its remote location along the Bayfield River, many people in Bayfield aren’t aware of the damage at Rainbow Valley, said Brandon. He’s not sure what it was that hit his campground, but some of the twisted limbs do look like it may have been a tornado. “I’ve never seen anything like this in this area. It’s huge. Hopefully it’s just a once-in-a lifetime event, but it sure twisted things up. Even if it wasn’t a twister, I don’t know what it was, but a downburst of some sort,” he said.
