Bemidji mayor to receive disaster leadership award for windstorm response

Bemidji Mayor Jorge Prince will be honored for the city’s windstorm response just as that response is still shaping local budgets, debris cleanup and recovery planning. At the June 15 Bemidji City Council meeting, Prince will receive the Tommy Longo disaster leadership award, a recognition tied to the June 21, 2025 storm that tore through Bemidji with hurricane-force winds of 120 mph.

The storm left a heavy mark on the city. Lakeland News reported about $10 million in damage to city-owned buildings alone, while an estimated nine million trees were destroyed across the area. Prince’s handling of the aftermath is now being recognized by LeadersLink, the nonprofit that created the award for current or former city and county officials whose leadership helps communities recover after disasters. Prince will be the fourth recipient.

In practical terms, the city’s response centered on getting debris off streets and out of neighborhoods. Prince previously described cleanup as happening in waves, with city crews using curbside pickup, a wood chipper and a grinder to process the material. “As a city, we’re taking that to our city site and processing it,” Prince said. “So we’ve got like a wood chipper and a grinder and these kinds of things. And this is wave one – we anticipate that there will be more waves.”

The award also lands in the middle of a long recovery tail. Prince has said he wanted any recognition to reflect the broader community rather than himself, and that point fits a storm response that pulled in emergency management staff, firefighters, line workers, volunteers, city departments and residents who dealt with outages, debris and damaged infrastructure. The recovery also carried a financial warning: Prince told U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar that the city and county expected reimbursement for 75% of the storm damage costs, leaving a 25% local share that would still be significant.

LeadersLink says the Tommy Longo award honors elected officials whose efforts helped a community recover successfully from a disaster. It is named for former Waveland, Mississippi Mayor Tommy Longo, who died in 2019 after years spent helping other communities recover. LeadersLink says nominees must come from a community that suffered physical damage from a disaster within the past 10 years.

For Bemidji, the June 15 meeting will be more than a ceremonial presentation. It will also be a public marker of how the June 21 windstorm changed the city’s priorities, from debris removal to financial planning, and how much of the recovery work remains unfinished.