fall 2008 - Northwestern College

When winds became too strong to continue a card game with
fellow campers, junior Carrie Manifold and her family
thought they’d check in with neighbors back home in
Parkersburg, Iowa, 20 miles west, to see if the storm had passed their
way.
Carrie’s mom, Diane, dialed the number and heard screaming. Their
friends were trapped in the basement by what was left of their house,
they told her. Through a window, this frightened family could see a
neighbor lying on the ground where her home used to be.
Between 4:45 and 6 p.m. on Sunday, May 25, an EF5 tornado with
winds at an estimated 205 mph devastated northeast Iowa, taking the
lives of eight people and injuring 70 others. The storm blew away a third
of Parkersburg’s buildings, 350 in all. When Carrie’s father, Tom, the
city’s chief EMT and a gas/electric serviceman, got in the car to head
back, he didn’t know if his house would be among those destroyed.
He reached the site of his home of 24 years to find only a wall and
part of a staircase sitting on an open foundation.
But right where the garage had been, Tom’s work boots were waiting.
Taking no time to dwell on his own loss, he changed out of his camping
sandals and began helping everyone else.
Lost and Found
“I’d never seen something so terrible in my life,” says Tom, well
acquainted with the “before” picture of the small town of 1,900 people.
“It looked like someone had come through there with fighter jets and
dropped bombs.”
Amidst all the wreckage, the Manifolds prayed they’d find a small
blue booklet. Carrie was scheduled to leave for a Northwestern Summer
of Service trip to Bahrain in just four days. How would she ever find her
passport?
Relief comes to student’s family
after Parkersburg tornado
BY AMY SCHEER
AP PHOTO/KEVIN SANDERS
“I’d never seen
something so
terrible in my life.
It looked like
someone had come
through there with
fighter jets and
dropped bombs.”
14
fall 2008