TOWN OF HERMAN — On a mild, moonless January night an enormous wind turbine the size of Milwaukee City Hall crashed to the ground in rural Dodge County.

No one was injured, but nearly two months later local residents, including the farmer who leases his land to the turbine operator, are full of questions. And they're not hearing many answers.

The turbine is owned and operated by NextEra Energy Resources, the renewable energy subsidiary of Florida-based NextEra Energy.

A company spokesman said the company is investigating the cause of the Jan. 18 turbine collapse, but declined to elaborate. The remnants of the crumpled turbine and its nearly 300-foot tower remain impaled in the field as preparations are made for its removal.

The Butler Ridge Wind Farm is impossible to miss as you approach the town of Herman on Highway 33. The majority of its wind turbines are south of the highway and the toppled tower and the large red crane brought in to remove it are clearly visible from the road.

The other 35 towers in the wind farm, each set on hilltops in the rolling farm country, continue to spin, pumping out electricity. Chad Dietrich, the farmer who leases the land where the turbine stood to NextEra, and other farm families who host wind turbines on their land wonder if another might fall.

"It has raised a lot of questions for people," said Lorna Steil, whose family leases land for two turbines on their farm a mile south of the broken turbine. "How safe is it to walk near? Should we be concerned? Is there something else that is going to happen to another turbine?"

Farmers plant crops right up to the base of the turbines, they park equipment under them and they walk up to their bases to give curious family members and other visitors a sense of their scale. Despite the uncertainty about what happened, none said they expect that to change in the wake of collapse.

Most have taken to heart NextEra's assurances that the collapse was an "isolated incident" — they've lived alongside the Butler Ridge Wind Farm since 2009, and nothing like it has happened before at Butler Ridge or at Wisconsin's nine other wind farms.

"It's a freak thing. We're not concerned about them," said Ann Schulz, who lives across the road, about a quarter mile from the ruined turbine. She and her husband, Tony, lease land for two turbines and continue to park farm implements under one, on a flat space at the top of a hill.

RELATED: What we know about the Dodge County wind turbine collapse

A loud noise and a surprise the next morning

Bob Boeder heard the thud - two of them actually - when the wind turbine collapsed a mile away from his home.

The retired dairy farmer lives in a valley on the opposite side of a hill from the failed turbine, but the noise was loud enough that he thought something might have gone wrong in the basement. He found nothing when he looked.

Others in the area heard it too. Some said it shook their houses, but it was the middle of the night - 11 p.m. Jan. 18 - and no one thought to go exploring on a dark winter night. IT was cloudy that night, and some attributed the sound to thunder. Others wrote it off as the kind of big noise one occasionally hears out in the country.

It wasn't until the next morning that anyone realized what had happened. Word spread quickly, not just among the small number of nearby homeowners and farmers, but throughout the town of 1,200 people and across the state on social media.

"When that one fell down, it's like everyone's question has been — if they know we're from this part of Dodge County — are you anywhere near that wind turbine that fell down? It's kind of gotten attention far and wide," Steil said.

No one tracks wind turbine failures

Niether the wind insdustry nor the government keep compreshensive records of turbine failures. An online news search turned up six reported collapses in the past year, including a NextEra tubine that collapsed in Oklahoma in August due to a cracked blade. The 76-trubine Niyol Wind Farm opened in 2021.

The causes of the turbine collapses in the past year, when reported, include storms, blade damage and mechanical failures.

One thing that likely can be ruled out: the tower was not toppled by wind alone. There was a stiff breeze that night, winds from the northeast gusted to nearly 30 mph, but that's not an overwhelming amount of wind for turbines that are built to withstand wind speeds in excess of 100 mph.

Shawn Boeder, a member of the Herman Town Board, said setback rules kept the towers from being sited close to homes and barns, and he's thankful that the turbine fell on a winter night when no one was in the field.

"This is an honest fear," he said. "It's lucky that nobody was was on the field, that it was overnight. If it would have been, say, springtime, and peole could have been involved in picking stones, or planting or fertilizing or tilling."

Boeder said he's frustrated by the company's lack of communication with residents and town officials.

"Communication's key — to have an open ear and be available to hear concerns, to answer a question — but it's just been difficult," he said. "I mean, we have a town meeting every month. It's not like they ever show up and say 'here's what's going on.'"

Tons of debris on the ground

It's really no surprise that people a mile away heard the crash.

The turbine towers are 262 feet tall, and the blades' 135 foot length push its maximum height to almost 400 feet. That's more than twice the height of the lights at Lambeau Field and 100 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty.

When the top third of the tower sheared off, the force of the impact drove much of the turbine and its three blades several feet into the ground. The turbine, the part that generates electricity is about the size of a travel camper. It, the blades and the rotor they spin on weigh about 86 tons.

Dietrich said he expects NextEra will begin moving the debris when conditions allow. Right now, the field is too wet for the crane to safely lift the heavy pieces of wreckage.

If there's one good, recent development, it's that the sightseer traffic has died down, Dietrich said.

"I'm glad the traffic died down," he said. "I swear it was like they diverted 33 down Rock Road - except for the semis."

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Why did a Dodge County windmill collapse? Residents still wait for answer