Iowa City residents look back on the 2006 tornado

IOWA CITY — It's been a decade, but the Rev. Rudolph Juarez remembers clearly the day a tornado ripped through downtown Iowa City, destroying the 130-year-old St. Patrick Catholic Church.

It was the evening of Thursday, April 13, 2006 — three days before Easter Sunday — when Juarez and more than 30 members of the congregation left the church and huddled in the basement of the next door rectory building.

'It was just as people described as far as sounding like a train — you hear the noise and I felt the air pressure changing, it was like the air was being sucked out of the house,' Jaurez recalled. 'We just heard this really loud rumble, and then it dissipated ...

It was over in a matter of minutes.'

Jaurez is one of many Iowa City residents who recall the F2-rated tornado that struck with 155 mph winds and left a 4.5-mile stretch of flipped cars, downed trees and destroyed buildings — but fortunately no deaths — in its wake.

Path of destruction

The tornado hit the southwest side of the city at about 8:30 p.m. near the Wal-Mart on Highway 1. The storm followed a northwestern path, ripping the roof off the Dairy Queen on Riverside Drive, destroying St. Patrick's near the corner of Linn and Court streets and wreaking havoc on several historic homes along Iowa Avenue.

Grace and Peter Jochimsen — along with their son, who was visiting for Easter that coming Sunday — hid in the basement of their 1010 Woodlawn Ave. home as the storm passed.

In the calm that followed, Peter recalled the eerie silence in the neighborhood, which was a mess of uprooted trees and broken glass.

'You just couldn't believe the amount of damage, everywhere you looked it was destruction,' he said.

The damage to the roof of the Jochimsen house was repairable, but others, such as St. Patrick's, weren't as fortunate.

Climbing from the basement of the rectory next door, Juarez remembers seeing the damage. The steeple had been knocked into the upstairs bedrooms of the rectory, and the roof had been lifted off the 130-year-old building.

'I looked up and could see sky where the roof should have been,' he said. 'Afterward we saw that the whole choir loft, along with the organ, ended up under the first floor of the church.'

But as with all cases of destruction in Iowa City, it could have been much worse.

'It was an eerie feeling to know we were just minutes away from what could have been a human disaster,' Juarez said.

Marsha Grady was chapter adviser at University of Iowa's Alpha Chi Omega sorority — located on the 800 block of East Washington Street — when the tornado hit.

'I got a call from one of our students and she said, 'Can you come over? The tornado tore the roof off,'' Grady recalled. 'They had a tendency to overreact or overexagerate. They were not exaggerating.'

The tornado had removed a portion of the nearly 100-year-old house's roof and most of the eastern wall had been peeled off, leaving behind what looked like an oversized doll house, Grady said.

Remarkably, nobody was seriously injured.

'When I stepped inside, I was almost physically ill,' Grady said. 'If it had happened at two in the morning, someone would have probably been severely injured or killed, that's when it really hit me.'

In all, about 30 people in Iowa City were injured, but none seriously.

The storm that hit Iowa City spawned similar tornadoes across the state. Fifteen tornadoes touched down in Eastern Iowa and western Illinois that night, including one in rural Nichols — about 20 miles southeast of Iowa City — that killed 49-year-old Christine McAtee.

Officials respond

Ross Wilburn was beginning his fourth month as Iowa City's mayor when the tornado struck.

With much of the city without power after the storm passed, it was hard to survey the damage, he recalled.

'You could only see what was immediately around you,' he said.

But as soon as the storm was gone, the city sprang into action — meeting at the emergency management center, which was then located at the Johnson County Jail.

'The staff know in advance what the priorities are in a storm like that, and that is to reestablish roadway access to things like hospitals and fire stations, your primary means of getting around, and respond to those in need of help,' said Rick Fosse, who was Iowa City's Public Works director at the time of the tornado.

A staging area was established at the Johnson County Fairgrounds to coordinate officials, Washington County sent about 100 police, fire and EMS personnel. The American Red Cross set up emergency housing at the Iowa Memorial Union building.

By Friday, then-Gov. Tom Vilsack declared a state of emergency for Johnson County. Two-dozen soldiers with the Iowa National Guard arrived in Iowa City to help maintain order and prevent looting.

The following two days were spent on damage assessments and clearing debris from city streets. More than 400 volunteers assisted with neighborhood cleanup.

On Easter Sunday, three days after the tornado, they rested.

'That's one of the reasons we sent everybody home, to relax and regroup,' Fosse said. 'That gave us an opportunity to put together a plan for that following week.'

Neighbors pull together

In the days after the storm, the Jochimsen family's despair over the damage was soon overtaken by an overwhelming outpouring of support from friends and neighbors. One friend provided them with a generator, while others helped remove trees that had fallen in their yard.

'That kind of spirit is wonderful to experience, that help in a time of need,' Grace said.

Two years later, Alpha Chi Omega returned to a new sorority house on the site of the former building.

More than three years after the tornado, a new St. Patrick's opened at 4330 St. Patrick Dr.

'With the tornado came the destruction of the old church ...

People were grieving over the loss of their church,' Juarez said. 'There was also a lot of hope because people had been talking at different times during the previous 10 years about the possibility of moving out to the east side of Iowa City.'

By December of that year, 300 permits had been filed with the city for more than $3.6 million in restoration work.

All told, city officials estimated the tornado caused around $15 million in damage. The damage, however, was not enough to warrant financial assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

'There just wasn't enough infrastructure damage to meet the dollar threshold,' Wilburn said.

But residents and city staff didn't just rebuild, they remembered.

Gov. Vilsack requested a presidential disaster declaration for several Iowa counties — including Johnson — as a result of the tornadoes, but it was denied by FEMA.

Emergency management experience and coordinating volunteer efforts came in very handy just two years later, when the Iowa River swelled beyond its banks and flooded several parts of Iowa City.

While the flood was a much different natural disaster, and devastating in its own way, Wilburn said it was notable how many of the lessons learned from the tornado were used to manage the flood.

Emergency management officials had experience in coordinating their disaster response efforts across the county and an established database of volunteers was ready when needed.

In addition to the recent experience of dealing with a natural disaster was the assurance that Iowa City residents would step up when their neighbors needed them.

'There's nothing like that experience, but I think you also develop a sense that you can rely on your neighbors,' he said. 'In Johnson County, we take care of our own.'