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Storms turn deadly in NE Montana

Faster horses

Well-known member
Powerful winds in a long line of storms across Eastern Montana on Wednesday evening destroyed a home near Froid, killing a woman and injuring her husband.

The Roosevelt County Sheriff’s Department on Thursday identified the woman as 59-year-old Romona Ryder. Her husband, Pat Ryder, was hospitalized in Williston, N.D. A wall in their modular home collapsed on him, breaking his arm and collarbone.

The Ryders lived in the Froid area in far northeastern Montana all of their lives and were farmers, according to Roosevelt County Commissioner Jim Shanks.

Shanks said strong winds pulled the woman from the couple’s newly constructed home about 3 miles west of Froid, carried her 250 feet and threw her into the yard. The emergency call came in at 10:20 p.m. Wednesday, and Ryder was dead by the time emergency workers reached the home.

Sheriff Freedom Crawford said the modular house was not built on a foundation.

Shanks, who lives near Brockton about 30 miles west of Froid, said there was a lot of wind and rain and lightning from the storm around his home. He said there is a lot of damage to trees and he saw a camper parked where it shouldn’t be east of Poplar.

“It blew right out the back of a pickup and onto a car,” he said.

Pattie Thompson, the Froid librarian who lives on a farm with her husband, Larry, less than a mile from the Ryders, said the storm began about 9 p.m.

“It was just torrential and it was very loud,” she said. “The lightning was flashing instantly over 40 minutes.”

She said their front window faces the Ryder place, but the storm was so violent and it was so dark that they didn’t witness the destruction of the Ryder house. At one point they saw flashing red lights at the Ryders’, as firetrucks, police cars and an ambulance arrived.

About 10:45 p.m., a firefighter came to Thompson’s house to make sure they were OK, and they learned of what happened to their neighbors.

Asked what the Ryder house looked like Thursday morning, Thompson said, “I was crying too hard to really see. I prayed all night for this woman.”

Late Thursday morning, she said, it seemed as though she was the only person left in town. Everyone else was out at the Ryder place, salvaging and sorting what belongings they could find in the rubble.

Thompson said the town of Froid, population about 200, was in shock Thursday. In addition to the death of Romona Ryder, a 31-year-old Froid man, Robert “Rob” Heyrend, was killed in a rollover accident early Wednesday.

Thompson said Heyrend had three children.
 

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