Minnesota residents whose homes were damaged or destroyed by yesterday’s tornadoes may be eager to start the process of cleaning up, repairing, rebuilding, or in some cases, starting over. Some might like to go through their homes in order to salvage and store whatever possessions they can in self storage facilities, hopefully before tornado-damaged roofs begin to leak and water damage sets in. But officials say that it is not safe to begin the cleanup and recovery process yet. [More]

Last week the media was just starting to report that several prominent country musicians, such as Brad Paisley and Keith Urban, expected to lose instruments and most of their touring equipment to the Nashville flood. The damage was done when the rising Cumberland River invaded Soundcheck Nashville, a storage and rehearsal space that at least 600 musicians rely on. This week reports of the actual, as opposed to the anticipated, damage started to come in.

In the end, musicians had to wait three days for flood waters to recede before they could attempt to enter their storage units at Soundcheck. When they did go in, they had to don rubber boots and gloves and wade through puddles. According to The Tennessean, salvagers found around 1,000 guitars, 2,000 amplifiers, and hundreds of drum sets that were damaged or destroyed. [More]