THE LIST: Let's learn from others

It’s been said before that “Once you stop learning, you start dying.” Whether I agree with that wholeheartedly or not, it’s probably pretty true.

Anytime I’m faced with a difficult situation around me, I try to be inquisitive and find out what worked for others who faced similar hurdles to clear or mountains to climb.

I’ve heard so many people in the last three weeks trying to compare the Greenfield and Adair County EF-4 tornado to others that have been prominently in the news, whether that’s Minden, Creston, Winterset, or even Parkersburg from 2008.

Being a sports junkie, I followed the Parkersburg story fairly closely. Four or five NFL players came out of Aplington-Parkersburg, coached by longtime coach Ed Thomas. He was a unifying force in that community after the EF-5 tornado destroyed much of their town of 2,000. Interestingly, that’s Greenfield’s population. Their goal was to have their home football stadium rebuilt by the next football season, and they did it. I’ve already heard of various events, like the county fair, that we are shooting for here. Goals are good.

I found a couple of articles I trust online and began reading about Parkersburg. While I don’t feel informed enough and wouldn’t want to compare their storm to ours anyway, I do have some observations to make.

The main article I found is on Parkersburg’s city website. I think it’s written from somebody in Emergency Management or FEMA. It was written on the 10-year anniversary of the tornado, in 2018. It says that tornado took less than three minutes to claim seven lives. Ours took about 40 seconds to claim four lives here and another in neighboring Adams County. Parkersburg’s injured 71 people, which is approximately double the number of injuries we had here.

Re-establishing emergency services was one of Parkersburg’s initial goals after their tornado. I’d say officials did a great job of that here as well.

“Early goal-setting was crucial to help guide the community’s recover and to give shocked and grieving residents a common focus and purpose,” Parkersburg’s former police chief says in the article.

One goal was that residents would see, with their own eyes, a Parkersburg police car, a Parkersburg fire truck and a Parkersburg ambulance every day shortly after the tornado. Early on in our disaster, and even since, I feel we’ve done a pretty good job of that here. You can read a story this week in the paper about the fire department getting back up and running in a temporary station, with temporary gear, because of community partners who care. Our hospital and associated ambulance service are responding to the community’s needs from the elementary school.

It seems our city council, mayor, City Hall staff, utilities and others have all done well at stepping in and maintaining confidence among residents that we may not be OK, but we’re going to be alright as a town. They should be applauded for what they’ve done so far and likely will do to keep people here and feeling alright about the future here.

Jeremy Cooper, from our emergency management agency, has done a great job of setting goals. He said at a recent Greenfield City Council meeting that he’d love for Greenfield to be able to host RAGBRAI and the county fair. That first one was made official last Thursday. Though it will be a lot of people, I’m glad to see RAGBRAI will still come to town. It gives us something positive to look forward to, and I’ve come to know over the years that RAGBRAI people are very kind-hearted. They will likely want to encourage us in many ways, including giving to our recovery effort.

I’ve talked to countless people from outside Greenfield and Adair County that came to help us, and many of them have told me that our response here was organized unlike many others are. We should be proud of that. Many of the people in charge around here, as well as an army of local volunteers, are to thank for that. We’ll be singing their praises for how they stepped up to the plate for years to come.

The City of Parkersburg was purposeful and systematic in messaging and unity after their tornado. Ten years after, they were better than they were before. Greenfield and Adair County has to remain purposeful and systematic going forward as well, aiming to win the marathon, not the sprint. Let’s learn from Parkersburg, and other places, in that there will not be any shortcuts we want to take if we want to come out of this stronger and better in the long haul.