Storm shelters put to good use this week by Boy Scouts at Camp Wakonda

CENTRAL CITY - In 2007, a tornado swept through the Howard H. Cherry Scout Reservation Camp near Central City in northern Linn County.

Boy Scouts, camp staffers and families - totaling about 700 people - 'hit the ditch” in an effort to ride out the storm as safely as possible, said Katie Lalla, who was a staff member at the time and now serves as camp director.

In 2008, a tornado raged through a Sioux City Boy Scout camp killing four teenagers and injuring 48 people.

Those incidents prompted scout leaders to take action on building storm shelters at what is commonly referred to as Camp Wakonda, 4521 Boy Scouts Rd.

The shelters were put to good use this week as severe weather hit northern Linn County on Wednesday and Thursday.

According to the National Weather Service, an EF-2 tornado, packing wins up to 120 mph, formed shortly before 7 p.m. on Wednesday near Central City, eventually making its way to the small city of Prairieburg, where it damaged many properties, injured one woman and left the city in disarray.

Camp Wakonda is about six miles from Prairieburg.

'We had been monitoring the weather all day,” Lalla said. 'We knew there was a threat of weather.”

Around 5:30 p.m., it started raining at the camp. From there, events unfolded very quickly.

'All off a sudden, a tornado warning went out and we staff start moving campers and families to storm shelters,” Lalla said, noting it was Family Night at the camp. She estimates more than 500 people - 270 area Boy Scouts and staffers, along with an extra 250 visitors - had to be accounted for.

'During the storm, we utilized six out of the seven storm shelters and the shower house,” Lalla said.

The Boy Scouts, who were all in sixth grade, were largely from Linn County, but Lalla said there were also Scouts from the Waterloo-Cedar Falls area and a few from Marshalltown and Northern Iowa.

'The staff was absolutely phenomenal in moving people to storm shelters and then taking charge,” she said. 'Once we were in the shelters, they tried to sing songs or tell stories to keep the boys occupied.”

After about an hour, everyone cleared out of the storm shelters. The families left and the little damage, like flipped over tents, was assessed.

But the Scouts were forced to retreat to the shelters a second and third time Wednesday night as two additional storm cells moved through the area.

'The last two times we had to get in we had so much warning,” Lalla said. 'It was a much smoother move to the storm shelters as opposed to the tornado sirens that came out of nowhere.”

Thursday brought another trip to the storm shelters as strong winds and a possibility of hail threatened the campsite.

'We've been lucky in this storm,” Lalla said. 'No injuries and no damage whatsoever. Some tents fell over but that's pretty easy to fix.”

The Boy Scouts, who arrived Sunday, will be leaving on Saturday morning after a rather tumultuous week of weather.

'The week was going successful otherwise,” Lalla said.

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