A New Ipswich man was seriously injured in a tent collapse at The Last Reformation’s evangelical revival event in New Ipswich Sunday which injured at least six people and hospitalized four.
Marcus Rautiola of New Ipswich was one of several locals who helped organize the traveling evangelical event, which took place on Locke Road from Aug. 14-23. Rautiola and a handful of others were working to clean up after the event Sunday afternoon when a severe thunderstorm swept through New Ipswich around 3 p.m. Sunday, the pitch-black sky pierced by lightning strikes and accompanied by howling winds.
“[The storm] was horrendous,” New Ipswich Deputy Fire Chief Gary Somero said Sunday evening. “It was just unbelievable.”
The storm swept over the Locke Road property which hosted the ten-day Last Reformation evangelical revival event and collapsed one of the large tents under which the program’s events took place. TLR’s evangelical leader Torben Sondergaard posted a video from the scene Sunday evening describing the storm and tent collapse.
“I’ve never seen any wind like this,” Sondergaard said. “A wind just came and took everyone up.”
Rautiola was seriously injured in the tent collapse, most likely struck by a falling pole, said family friend and Christian Outreach pastor Bob Hakala Monday morning, though in the confusion it was unclear exactly what happened.
“Marcus got hit pretty hard,” Hakala said. “He was probably hurt the worst of anybody.”
Hakala said Rautiola suffered a fractured skull, jaw and nose and brain swelling.
A spokesperson at UMASS Memorial Medical Center confirmed Monday morning that Rautiola had been admitted to the University Campus emergency room and was awaiting treatment.
“He’ll recover, there’s no doubt about that,” Hakala said.
Deputy Chief Somero said that crews were called just after 3 p.m. Sunday with reports of up to 20 people injured in a tent collapse, triggering a mass casualty incident response with seven ambulances from all around the region deployed to the scene. When Somero arrived on scene, he found that all the occupants had “self-extricated” from the collapsed tent. Some of those occupants, including Rautiola, had been driven from the scene to receive treatment before emergency personnel arrived. Crews set up triage in a barn on the property to assess the remaining injured and ultimately transported four people to local hospitals.
Somero said one subject had what appeared to be a broken arm, but that was the worst of the injuries as far as he could surmise.
“They were very lucky,” Somero said, “especially with the amount of lightning that was bouncing around over there.”
Two other people reported minor injuries but declined transport.
The tents on state representative Paul Somero’s Locke Road property were inspected, and passed, last week ahead of TLR’s event, which was under scrutiny since before the traveling band of North Carolinian evangelists and their Danish leader ever set foot in New Ipswich. Locals concerned about a possible COVID-19 super-spreader event lobbied local and state government for some oversight, which came in the form of a mask mandate. Despite the hullabaloo (and pending the possibility of a resulting localized COVID outbreak), it appeared as though the group’s time in New Hampshire would be marked by little distress, as locals reported no issues during the ten-day stay. Instead, their final day in town featured a freak weather event and ensuing calamity the likes of which Deputy Chief Somero had rarely seen.
“This was a first,” Somero said. “I expected them to be quietly packing up and ready to go – which I guess is what they were trying to do.”