Turing Tragedy into Triumph

On May 25, 2008 an EF5 tornado touched down on
Parkersburg and New Hartford, Iowa causing massive
property damage and the tragic loss of life.


Background sound:  
911 Where is your emergency...Oh um a tornado has hit the Pizza Ranch in Parkersburg and kids are trapped in the bathroom...911 where is your emergency...Ye  I'm in Parkersburg. Ye . It's looking really bad, real bad?  We got them all coming. Ok. Alright.


This is endless. Udder catastrophe and sickening and disturbing. Nature's furry visited and a um people's response. Without the death toll just like Nagasaki. This event has been awful. Wow. Gut wrenching. I have never in my life seen anything like this. Mind boggling. What started out as complete devastation and chaos has turned into complete cooperation for the recovery of Parkersburg.
New Hartford we have a tornado sighted.  Its right it's going to go right into the field. It was definitely total chaos just total chaos. It's a horrible event, but people will survive. 


Chris Luhring, Police Chief of Parkersburg: 	
You know you are seeing one great example behind me, which is the Parkersburg High School being built. Our former high school that I attended actually was destroyed and leveled by the tornado that hit this town.   But   I know funding also has come in to facilitate the building of our city playground parks and very important to rebuild those parks for the citizens of Parkersburg but most importantly for the kids, for the children of the community that went through this devastation.  It definitely was a part of rebuilding our city hall.   the insurance coverage that the city of Parkersburg had which we thought was immense didn't come close to even covering the cost of actually of rebuilding the exact same city hall for the most part that we had before. So the funding dollars just for those three aspects have been important to me   and very personal to the citizens of Parkersburg, we're very happy. You know there are several different facets to rebuilding.   there is a structural aspect of it. There is a psychological aspect of it. There are multiple facets of rebuilding but   I say structurally physically from a building standpoint   our model of recovery is exactly that it's a model. Doing it rapidly but in the right way is very important to us. So we are not just throwing up a chantey town here   we are putting up high quality homes building high quality buildings and I am very proud of what Parkersburg has done. Uh Parkersburg has received funding from both the state and federal government including FEMA, but a lot of funding from the state and federal government has immensely helped including the ninety when the federal government chose to do ninety-ten. That was a huge thing that came to Parkersburg. We moved into our City Hall two days ago. Just to do that within ten months, to get that building built within ten months of our destruction is another psychologically positive thing that people can see that we are moving forward and we are rebuilding the same buildings that we had before even. My fore fathers, my generation before me, my dad's generation uh never envisioned that an EF5 would come through the little town of Parkersburg Iowa and destroy that high school building. But the school, I think in every small rural Iowa community is the high light of that town. It is the epicenter of the town. Basically, the school incorporates everything that the citizens of Parkersburg need now and will need into the future. And uh rebuilding of that building is beyond anything anybody can imagine. Uh it incorporates it incorporates a basement as far as a storm shelter uh for future tornadoes and that's also to make sure people feel safe not just that they are safe but that they feel safe in the event we have another tornado. So we are all very very excited about the rebuilding of our high school. Uh the state and federal resources and the state working with the federal government on our behalf was very good and uh you have some very very fine men and women that work for FEMA and uh the fine men and women that came here that did their job with to the best of their ability with the best of intentions did a fantastic job and offered some great advice.

Brad Schipper, New Hartford Fire Chief:
Uh it's come a long ways, I mean a lot of people that aren't redoing their houses from the flooding or the tornados  have got a lot of it cleaned up   other than that I mean a lot people are back into their houses. One of the biggest things that the funding has helped for the city of New Hartford is a redoing the library. Uh getting the streets done   because we had four or five streets that were impassable and the city wouldn't have been able to afford to get the streets running again. Plus we have city hall back it's it's still not open city hall but it will be in like three weeks. I think they are finally going to get it reopened. Funding is really valuable to New Hartford. There is no way a city New Hartford's size could afford to do it. There's not enough tax money in the city to do that so if you don't get the money from the government, you're basically going without and you would have I mean towns the size of New Hartford would basically close up because there is no way you can afford to fix it. I think they got like four to six inches through the main part of the school which included the gym floor, the rec room all that and they pretty much got it all repaired.  I mean they started school as scheduled this year so um I think what the funding from the government I I'm positive, or pretty sure that a lot of it went for computers, carpet, flooring, paint, cause it ruined the desks it ruined pretty much everything. Well the field officer for FEMA is probably made it a whole lot better because they could explain to you what you had to do and how to go about doing it and they have been through disasters so they   kind of know the ends and outs of dealing with it and how to get something accomplished like if you need you need money for this and you don't know where you are going to get money they can turn field officer turn and tell  you hey we got this money all you got to do is fill out this form and we can get the money for  you. FEMA was here for probably two months straight so I had good things to say about FEMA I had bad things to say about FEMA but overall I think FEMA did an outstanding job. 


Bill Vogel, Federal Coordinating Officer:
May 25th 2008 was a day that impacted the people of the small communities of Parkersburg and New Hartford Iowa in ways that were really unimaginable. Now a year later and after a lot of determination, dedication, and inspiration of the people for the recovery, the renewal, and the rebuilding of these cities is evident on a daily basis everywhere you look. I was so impressed and inspired by all the of the can do attitude and pride that the people of Iowa had during these challenging times. It was just a very rewarding experience for myself to be involved with personally. So on behalf of all the men and women of FEMA and all of those who had any involvement in any of the response and recovery I want to express my gratitude to you by allowing us to assist the Hawkeye state over the past year and the many days that are to come as we watch you turn tragedy into triumph.

For more information, visit www.fema.gov