An amazing sight in Iowa these days is the quick recovery of Parkersburg a year after a tornado destroyed nearly 300 homes.
I’ve been following the family of Tom Reinert (left) because he and his brother, Mike, faced similar tragedies. After Tom’s family lost their Parkersburg home to the tornado on May 25, Mike and his [...]
Posts Tagged as ‘Tornado’
May 25, 2009
Parkersburg A Year After Tornado
July 21, 2008
Brothers Lost Homes to Tornado, Flood
How can two separate disasters strike two brothers living 80 miles apart in a three-week period? How are they coping? What will they do?
Those are questions today’s Ramblin’ column in The Gazette begins to answer in my year-long project following brothers Mike and Tom Reinert who grew up in Elkader and lost their homes to natural disasters – Tom [...]
June 29, 2008
Survived Flood and Tornado
Jenny Hayes, 50, has now survived a flood as well as a tornado.
Jenny was in fourth grade back in 1968 when a tornado roared through Oelwein. Her parents’ house was a rock she told me as we chatted at the shelter set up at New Creation United Methodist Church in Cedar Rapids. The staircase in the middle [...]
June 9, 2008
Tornadoes and Floods, Oh My
If it hasn’t been high winds, it seems to be high waters that are plaguing Iowans this year. Certainly a spring for the ages, bringing back memories of tornadoes that hit Oelwein and Charles City 40 years ago and the floods that swept through river communities 15 years ago.
Having been been to Charles City after [...]
