Greg Bales

Tornado Remembered

Five years ago today, a tornado cut its way across downtown Iowa City. When it did, it took the face off the house we were living in.

The house we lived in after a tornado struck it on April 13, 2006. Our apartment was on the second floor. The door to the apartment is on the far right of the porch; we were crouched behind it when the tornado hit.

I documented much of my immediate experience at my old blog and on Flickr. (The Press-Citizen also has a photo gallery of the storm’s damage.) Of the tornado itself, I still remember the ominous drop in air pressure; I still remember realizing the danger we were in when I saw that the curtains and blinds were being sucked out the windows; I still remember the feel of the wall buckling as, not five feet away on the other side of the door, the porch was ripped off the house, and of K in my arms. All else was terror and adrenaline.

The storm was the beginning of an odd several weeks. Our apartment was habitable, but our landlady’s dilly-dallying made us refugees in our own city, guests of friends. K and I were both working the same time-sensitive temp job managed by a man who seemed to think it his duty to lecture us about time and responsibility, tornado or not. In the middle of it all, I was obliged to travel to Billings, Montana, for a weekend. Meanwhile, spring came. Flowers flowered and trees leafed and grass grew. When we moved back in, we were met by a lone roofer who preferred to work at night and in thunderstorms. It was the roofer’s omnipresence and the fact that he never made any progress on the roof that convinced us it was time to leave that ravaged street.

Moving put much of the personal trauma of the storm behind us, and severe-storm-wise, it has been a calm five years. (Though weather-wise, we have had flooding to contend with.) Even so, five years later, K and I are still cautious. Especially in Spring, we watch the skies warily.