Storm damage in West Central Iowa has local effects

Editor’s note: Chris Braunschweig, reporter for the Newton News, contributed to this article.

A rush on power generators in Union County is due to storm damage in West Central Iowa.

Zeke Chafa, manager of the Creston True Value Hardware said they sold all four of their generators yesterday, plus several chainsaws.

“We’ve never seen anything like it, where they come this far down” Chafa said. “Usually when it’s something in Des Moines, you don’t see it this far south.”

The Creston News Advertiser’s sister publication in Newton was devastated by the sudden storm Monday. Their building was severely damaged and they are still without power, possibly for five more days.

A CNA data system is housed in Newton, so publisher Rich Paulsen had to travel to Des Moines to retrieve back up disks, which needed to be installed in Creston.

“Timewise it’s just getting everything back up and running,” Paulsen said of the disruption to Creston’s and Newton’s office.

Creston staff have been assisting where possible with editor Sarah Scull preparing photos and posting stories online for The Newton News with the print edition having to be paginated and printed in Creston due to damage in Marshalltown.

“It’s been particularly challenging these past two days with Newton not having power. Their editor has been attempting to send photos, stories and updates through text messages as they can’t gain connectivity with their computers,” said Scull. “Text messaging hasn’t been much better for anyone. Justin Glisan, the state climatologist, who was also affected, said many cell towers in the area were taken out by the high winds. But, the news still matters and people in that area still rely on it. Particularly for resources to meet their immediate basic needs and financial relief.”

Straight-line winds as fast as 99 mph on Monday ripped through Central Iowa communities, including Jasper County, and have severely damaged neighborhoods and left thousands of people without power. According to the National Weather Service, some of the strongest winds hit Newton.

As of 8 a.m. Wednesday, Jasper County still had more than 11,000 of its 19,000 customers without power. Marshall, Tama and Linn counties had outages of nearly 100% and four more counties were at or above 60%, for a total of 337,957 customers in the state. Tuesday 406,044 Iowans, mostly in central and eastern Iowa had been without power, according to www.poweroutage.us.

The National Weather Service reported the highest official wind gust measured 99 mph at the Marshalltown Airport, but an unofficial wind gust of 106 mph was also reported at Le Grand. Some of the strongest winds were between Highway 30 and Interstate 80, moving eastward.

Areas affected by these straight-line winds include: the Des Moines metro, Ames, Newton, Marshalltown, Tama/Toledo and Carroll, the National Weather Service reported.

This type of destructive gust is known as a derecho, which the National Severe Storm Laboratory defines as:

“A widespread, long-lived wind storm that is associated with a band of rapidly moving showers or thunderstorms,” the NSSL’s website states, noting derecho wind speeds usually exceed 58 mph. “A typical derecho consists of numerous microbursts, downbursts and downburst clusters.”

On Monday morning, shortly after the storm had cleared, Jasper County Sheriff John Halferty confirmed just about every town in the area was hit. Multiple power lines were down and upended trees were scattered. There were damages to several structures and to crops. Some roads were inaccessible.

Recovery efforts began almost immediately. Authorities encouraged citizens not to travel, especially when there were numerous reports of electrical wires within arms reach of the road surface. At least two deaths have been attributed to the storm; one in Cedar Rapids and one in Indiana.

Timeframes are difficult to manage right now, Halferty said. Officials don’t know when roads will open up, nor when power will be restored.