Iowa Tornado
Floor Speech
IOWA TORNADO -- (Senate - June 05, 2008)
Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I probably will not be more than 10 minutes, but I appreciate the will of the Senate if I need a few more minutes.
Today, I pay tribute to the victims of the devastating tornado that ripped through northeast Iowa a week ago Sunday. This would have been Memorial Day weekend. That is a weekend that traditionally offers a thank-you to veterans who have given their lives. It is a time of backyard barbecues, and in the Midwest it is when swimming pools open for business. But late afternoon on May 25, 2008, Mother Nature unleashed a tragic beginning to a summer vacation. It was a kind of natural disaster that makes people realize the perils of pettiness and appreciate what really matters the most.
A history-making twister produced winds in excess of 200 miles per hour. It tore across Butler County--that is my home county--Black Hawk County, Delaware County, and Buchanan County. It paved a 43-mile path of destruction. The severe storm system virtually ripped the town of Parkersburg in half. It destroyed 22 businesses, leveled 222 homes, and damaged 408 others in a community of only 2,000. The storm system injured 70 individuals. The fatalities attributed to the tornado have now risen to eight Iowans.
But the statistics don't do justice to the heartbreak and to the hurt. Natural disasters have wrought havoc on humanity since the beginning of time. In recent years, the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia claimed more than 100,000 lives and displaced millions of victims from their homes. In September 2005, a category 5 hurricane ravaged the American gulf coast, causing $11.3 billion in damages. Last year, in Greensburg, KS, a tornado leveled the entire community of 1,400, causing an estimated $267 million in damage. The financial estimate of damage from the May 25 tornado in my home area from storms and flooding hasn't been calculated yet, but the pricetag will not do justice to the heartbreak and to the hurt.
Whether it is an earthquake, a hurricane, or a tornado, a natural disaster leaves behind massive debris and destruction. The physical and financial tolls shouldered by the victims arguably pale compared to the emotional scars and personal losses left in the aftermath of a killer natural disaster.
This tornado was what they call an F-5 tornado, the worst they get. It struck terror into the hearts and minds of northeast Iowans over Memorial Day weekend, and it also hit close to home as well. From the lawn on my farm near New Hartford, I watched what I thought was nothing but a dark storm cloud blackening the sky as the tornado made its way across Butler County from Parkersburg--population, as I said, about 2,000--to my hometown of New Hartford, population 600.
It was the first F-5 tornado to strike Iowa since 1976, so tornadoes like this don't happen every day in our State. Maybe they do in Oklahoma, but they do not every day in my State. And it happened to be the deadliest tornado in the State since the 1968 tornado in Charles City, IA. I believe that tornado claimed about 13 lives compared to the 8 so far here.
In some ways, the storm may serve as a wake-up call to those of us who have become somewhat complacent about severe weather warnings. The day after the storm, I visited with residents of Parkersburg and New Hartford and toured the damage, along with Senator Harkin and Governor Culver, and Congressman Braley was there. It was an unimaginable scene.
In Parkersburg, the tornado ripped apart the Aplington-Parkersburg High School. This is a picture of that devastating damage. It will cost $14 million to rebuild. Thank God they were well insured, I have been told. I haven't heard that directly but indirectly.
It destroyed the Parkersburg City Hall, crushed the town's only gas station, and crumbled the grocery store. If you watched CNN yesterday, you were able to find some pictures from the cameras that guard the bank during the night and over the weekend, and you saw, before they went blank, sucking everything up. And you know where a lot of those bank papers landed, and a lot of pictures from various homes? In Prairie Du Chien, WI, 100 miles away. And those people in Prairie Du Chien, we are told by television, are collecting all those valuables and are someday going to bring them back to Parkersburg, IA.
In the afternoon of this tragedy, seven people sought refuge and survived by going to a produce cooler in one of the restaurants there. That is just one example of what people do. So more life could have been taken. I have been told by some people that as the Weather Bureau or the government agencies that measure this stuff and tracked the storm, that this damage to 220 homes in Parkersburg, IA, could have been done in just a few seconds, like 20, 30 seconds. Some people on the scene said it had to be less than 45 seconds. But in just a few minutes or a few seconds, whatever you want to say, a mile-wide tornado wiped away a lifetime of treasured belongings, furniture, and family memorabilia. There are no parts of homes sitting around. There is only sticks sitting around, and a lot of that landed in farm fields miles away. There are uprooted trees. There is not a tree with a leaf, maybe a limb or two. The trunk maybe still stands, or maybe the trunk is down. We have mangled vehicles. Some people didn't know where their vehicle ended up. Maybe today they do, but they didn't a week after the storm, they told me. It killed a lot of livestock in the rural areas, ripped away roofs and walls, mowed down neighborhoods, shredded solidly built homes like toothpicks, and knocked out the city's infrastructure.
I saw this debris. I am told that there were 60,000 tons in Parkersburg alone left behind in the wake of the tornado. I suppose that is a rough guesstimate, but the people who know about the tragedy know how to estimate some of this stuff. This picture of the high school, once again, probably isn't the best picture I could produce about how much of a wilderness the southern half of this small town is, and I don't think this captures the wreckage, but it is a small glimpse. It is nearly inconceivable to understand the awesome force of Mother Nature.
Thankfully, the resiliency and the compassion of human nature also has proven that it can withstand floods and droughts and famines, and so it shall be in my home State. After seeing the devastation firsthand, it still made me wonder that the fatalities have thus far been kept in single digits considering that 70 people were hospitalized. And I commend the emergency preparedness plans put into action by city and county authorities and during the storm. The civil defense people came from the adjoining counties without hardly even being called to come. They knew we needed help. And thanks to the warning systems, countless lives were saved.
In fact, rising above the call of duty, volunteer firefighters in my hometown of New Hartford raced up and down the streets after the power had gone out alerting people with their vehicle sirens, just to show their commitment to letting everybody know that just a few minutes away was a terrible weapon of destruction.
Exactly 1 week after the storm blazed its trail through the region, I returned to Parkersburg. I am pleased to report relief and recovery efforts underway. I saw fire departments coming up to serve the community and the surrounding communities from 100 miles away--the suburbs of Des Moines, IA, is an example.
I hope you know there is a great deal of resilience in the people of Parkersburg and New Hartford. Like a beacon of hope, I want to show you where people were, what they were doing 6 days after this tornado hit through. This doesn't give justice to all the debris that still has not been picked up, but there were people constructing new buildings right away. Except for a generation of trees being gone--because 25 years from now you will be able to go down this 43 miles and you are going to know where this tornado went--except for that, Parkersburg and these other communities will be back in a few months. I give this as evidence of the resilience of the people, only 6 days after this damage took place.
The cleanup operation, of course, will take a long time. Bulky machinery will do the heaviest lifting. That is after people have an opportunity to paw through all of the strewn things that are there, so they can take out some of their valuables in the sense of remembrances--pictures, photographs, maybe some important documents they might find. There may be some of those important documents up in Prairie Duchene.
The scoreboard for this high school ended up 70 miles in Decorah, IA, as an example. Maybe it was part of the scoreboard, but this tells you how it is.
It is going to take countless hours of manpower to orchestrate this massive undertaking to get the job done. The seemingly impossible task is being made possible, thanks to the tireless commitments of Butler County's first responders, administrators, emergency crews, and legions of volunteers, but in addition to my county, counties around it. You can't believe the number of trucks that came in Sunday to haul away debris, as an example.
We have had the donation of food, water, clothing, and other supplies poured into the tornado-ravaged region. I wish to mention a few notable examples of neighbors and strangers lending a hand during the recovery week. There is no count of construction crews and heavy equipment volunteers coming in from as far as Tennessee. I have thanked Senator Corker I have not thanked Senator Alexander yet, for people coming all way from Tennessee with very heavy equipment. People who were cleaning up from tornadoes in Oklahoma the night before spent the night on the road to come up and help people in Parkersburg, IA.
Separately, we had a group of traveling volunteers known as the Massage Emergency Response Team from California--people who are physical therapists who came in to rub the backs of people working day and night. They offer assistance to those who need stress and tension relief from their recovery work.
We had a group of 90 high school students, mostly football players from the Catholic high school, Dowling, in Des Moines, traveling 100 miles to help with the recovery work at the Aplington-Parkersburg High School athletic fields. If you want to know how this little town of 200 is proud of its football team, this little town has four NFL players, right now--I mean not right now today playing football, but still signed up. These Dowling High School people pitched in to rake up glass and debris.
The Salvation Army has set up mobile canteens serving 1,000 hot meals each day to the Parkersburg residents and relief residents, and in New Hartford as well. And the Red Cross, as you would expect because of their good reputation, was immediately on the job and is still present.
The tornado, storm, and flood damage over Memorial Day weekend in Iowa has received Federal declaration of disaster assistance, and people have come in from FEMA, from Sacramento, CA; from Pennsylvania and from New Jersey; maybe from a lot of other places that I had a chance to meet on that Sunday afternoon. So the Federal people are working well, as they should.
Residents in these communities will need help rebuilding and I know Iowans appreciate that help. So I am here to say thank you to everybody.
I listed only a few people. If I knew everybody who was helping out, there wouldn't be any help there. You can't keep on top of everybody who is stressing out. When I was in church in Cedar Falls, IA, one Sunday we had people there from North Carolina--Franklin Graham. We had people there from the Billy Graham organization in Minneapolis.
Looking out across the countryside near my home, our corner of the world looks turned upside down. Utility polls, shingles, siding, insulation, uprooted trees are strewn across the farm fields. The cleanup will take time, but I know Iowans are in this for the long haul. I and other Grassleys were fortunate in this damage, because I live 1 1/2 miles south of where the tornado went through on a farm. My son and grandson farm with me. They live a mile and a half north of where the tornado went through. I thank God for that.
We lost friends. A person named Norman who worked at the New Hartford grain elevator will not be there because he was killed in this tornado. So Norman, who always greeted us when we would go to the elevator to unload our grain in the fall--his friendly face will be missed.
The outpouring of support from neighbors, friends, and strangers from near and far has given a jump-start to the necessary healing process. It underscores the decency of human nature rising above catastrophic forces of Mother Nature. The selfless sacrifice by literally scores of heroes will help mend the immeasurable heartbreak and hurts that I saw during my visits to these communities.
I say with gladness in my own heart, the F5 tornado did not extinguish the hope and pride of residents of the midwestern communities who call Parkersburg, New Hartford, Hazleton, and Dunkerton home.
I suppose maybe it is a little bit ambitious on my part to take the floor of the Senate to acknowledge this and to praise the Lord for what can be done now, and the people who have not been hurt. I suppose every one of my colleagues, particularly in the tornado channel that I most often hear about, of Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, and I guess yesterday damage around here as well--maybe every Senator could tell the story I tell. But, frankly, tornadoes are not as common in my State as they are in these other States and there is a lesson to be learned from this. There is an appreciation to be learned from it. We all ought to remember how lucky--and then we need to remember how unlucky--some people and families are, in our daily life.
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