Turtle Fest fun continues through the weekend in Perham

Turtle Fest, Perham’s annual street and arts festival, is already in full swing, and the events will keep on going all weekend including The Grand Parade which steps off on Friday night at 6:30 p.m.

Nick Murdock, director of the Perham Area Chamber of Commerce, said, while the Chamber hosts the festival, many of the events are run by different community organizations and groups, which makes the festival a true celebration of everything the community has to offer.

“Turtle Fest really comes from a community effort,” said Murdock. “Us at the Chamber, we organize all these things, but all of these events are actually administered by separate groups.”

He added the Chamber just combines all of their great ideas and schedules them into a festival.

One of the Turtle Fest main events are the turtle races, Murdock said. This year, more than 240 competitors raced their slow-moving reptiles in the Wednesday morning turtle races, a tradition of the town festival with the turtle serving as its mascot.

Festival attendees should also be on the lookout for the Turtle Fest Medallion while they are enjoying the food stands and different vendor booths for a chance to win $500 in Perham Chamber Bucks. Clues to the medallion’s location will be posted at noon on Perham.com and the Discover Perham Facebook page.

Murdock also said one of the events his kids look forward to every year is The Grand Parade, and this year’s parade should have about 80 entries of different marchers and floats.

“My kids love the parade,” he said. “We’ve been going to the parade every year since I can remember. We’ve got close to 80 units in the parade this year, which I think is more than we had last year. And it’s just awesome to see the streets lined with people and everybody is entertained and everybody is having a good time.”

Friday’s events are also highlighted by trolley rides, a Rib Fest at Central Market in Perham, a chicken wing eating competition at Pizza Ranch and live music Friday night featuring the Fat Cats.

Murdock said Saturday’s event program will also be packed with entertainment for children and adults of all ages.

“And then getting into Saturday, I mean it just keeps on going,” said Murdock. “The pancake feed at the fire department will start off Saturday. There’s also a 5K and 10K, if you want to burn off some of those pancakes and that starts at 8 a.m. with registration online.”

The all-city rummage sale will also be a Saturday highlight for anyone looking to do some picking, he said.

“Then the big stuff at the end of the day, we’ve got the Street Dance right on Main Street,” said Murdock. “We’ve got Jacked Up coming to entertain the people and, at dusk, the fireworks out at the fairgrounds, so there’s just no shortage of things.”

For a full schedule of Turtle Fest events, visit Perham.com or the Discover Perham Facebook page.

Refunds to be issued for June 9 Ice Cube concert in Walker

Concertgoers who attended the Ice Cube concert at Northern Lights Casino on June 9 can get full refunds for the 1-song concert beginning Friday at 8 a.m.

The show was delayed for severe weather only one song into the performance and eventually cancelled.

In a June 14 social media post by the Northern Lights Casino management, they apologized for the show being cut short and said they made every effort to continue the concert. The casino management blamed Ice Cube’s management team for not continuing with the performance.

In the show cancelation announcement on June 9, the casino initially said no refunds would be given for the rain-or-shine event.

However, after multiple attendees voiced their frustrations, the casino management decided to issue the refunds.

Ticket holders can received their refunds in cash from the casino cage cashier beginning June 16 at 8 a.m. Those that paid by credit card will be automatically refunded the ticket price within 5-10 business days.

Minnesota Department of Public Safety confirms 70 fire-related deaths in 2022

The Minnesota Department of Public Safety announced 70 people died across the state in 2022 during fire-related emergencies.

In a news release, the agency said 2022 saw the most fire-related deaths since 1995 when 86 people were killed as a result of a fire.

Minnesota’s interim State Fire Marshal, Amanda Swenson, said these people were more than just numbers on a page.

“While these are the numbers, they were also people,” said Swenson. “They were loved. They had families, jobs and lives and their future was really tragically cut short. So, if 70 seems like a high number, it is.”

The state fire marshal’s office compiled the data from reports from fire departments across the state and the Minnesota Department of Health to make sure the reports and the official causes of death matched.

According to the data, 48 fire fatality victims were male and 22 were female with an average age of 56 years old.

Additionally, Swenson said, 9 fatalities were caused by careless smoking, where an individual did not extinguish their cigarette properly before going to bed. 13 deaths were the result of a vehicle crash that caused a fire and 29 of the 70 deaths occurred when drugs or alcohol were present.

“It’s important to note that while many of these fires can be tracked back to those lifestyle, behavior decisions, some of these fire deaths were the result of accidental incidents, such as: scalding from boiling water, carbon monoxide poisoning, or a gas leak,” she said. 

The agency also points out that 59% of all deadly-fires in 2022 occurred in 30 Greater Minnesota counties; representing 41 of the 70 total deaths.

Per every one million Minnesotans, the fire fatality rate more than doubles in Greater Minnesota compared to the seven-county Twin Cities metro area.

Brainerd Fire Chief Tim Holmes said Greater Minnesota firefighters have to endure a lot of things their metro area counterparts don’t, which may play into fire fatality disparagement between the two areas.

“This data is troubling to Greater Minnesota firefighters for a number of reasons,” said Holmes. “The first, we are already at a disadvantage because paid-on-call firefighters staff many of these departments.”

He said being an on-call firefighter takes more time to respond to the fire station and then load-out for the emergency than it would take for a full-time firefighter to respond a scene directly.

The news release also stated the state fire marshal’s office will be spending the rest of the year doing outreach with their partners in various communities to make an effort to reduce the number of fatalities in 2023.

Minnesota adds 8,700 workers to labor force; participation rate rises to 68.2%

More than 8,700 workers entered the Minnesota job market in May, according to a Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development employment report.

The worker gains increased the state’s labor force participation rate by a tenth of a percent, 0.1%, to 68.2%. The unemployment rate also rose a tenth of a percent to 2.9%.

The agency said, over the last three months, more than 13,000 Minnesotans have been added to the labor force; the largest three-month gain since January to March of 2022. 

However, the agency said, the total labor force is still more than 32,000 workers smaller than February 2020, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Minnesota’s interim DEED commissioner, Kevin McKinnon, said the growing labor force is a sign of a strong Minnesota economy.

McKinnon also said: “Employers constantly tell us that they need more workers to fill their open roles. Now, we’ve seen back-to-back months during which more workers are pursuing jobs around the state.”

As a state, Minnesota is doing better than the U.S. national unemployment rate of 3.7% and is nearly 6% higher than the national labor force participation rate of 62.6%.

TO READ MORE LAKES AREA NEWS, AND LISTEN LIVE, DOWNLOAD THE LAKES AREA RADIO APP FREE IN THE GOOGLE PLAY STORE OR APPLE APP STORE.