‘Very, very blessed’: Minden, Iowa, residents, officials take stock after deadly tornado
One man lost his life. Many lost most everything they own. While some still wonder why they were spared, others who weren’t insist they’re ‘very fortunate.’
MINDEN, Iowa (WOWT) - The small town in southwest Iowa has only around 600 people who live there; but somehow a tornado found that spot on the map and tried to wipe it out.
One of the town’s residents was lost in the storm; the tornado claimed the life of Nicholas Ring.
As the town mourns the loss of one of its own, they’re also working to clean up and bounce back after suffering major material loss.
Moving through the town of Minden, it’s tough to figure out where to begin cleaning up. Destruction is everywhere you look — almost nothing was spared.
“All of a sudden, the house lifted up off the foundation and crashed back down,” said Sherry Ingram.
She’s lived in this 120-year-old house for only a year.
“You can see where it had come off the foundation, and it’s still shifting. This pillar is leaning more and more toward the street. ... All the walls are cracked; all the windows are gone,” she said. “We haven’t had an adjuster out yet — I’ve talked to them.”
Meanwhile, only a few trees are down at Raymond Arnold’s house. Right now, he’s feeling guilty because of the direction the winds took the tornado.
“The thing I don’t understand is everything we’ve got is good, and we should — just guilty. It’s unbelievable,” he said.
TORNADO COVERAGE
How to help — and find help
Here are ways you can assist those in Nebraska and Iowa who are recovering from tornadoes that hit on Friday, April 26.
National Weather Service issues first official report on Friday’s storm
At least 9 tornadoes confirmed with 5 significant EF-3 tornado paths identified.
Sara Arnold will have to stay with her parents for a while. The tornado was not as kind to her home. But she’s grateful for the what the storm left them.
“We were very fortunate. Like, our roof over our garage stayed intact, so our cars were OK. And the ceiling over our closet stayed intact, so we were able to get a lot of the clothing out of our house. So we’re very, very blessed,” she said.
Arnold says Minden is also blessed: A lot of volunteer help is coming from within the community.
Her roots run deep here, and looking at all of these people providing all of this help, she tells us it’s nothing new.
“My great-great-grandparents settled here when they built the town, essentially. It’s devastating, but it doesn’t surprise me at all,” Arnold said. “Like, the rallying of everybody coming together and neighbors just helping each other — that’s nothing new for our community at all; that’s how we live day to day, basically.”
‘WE’LL GET THERE’
Friday’s tornado was another tragic page in Minden’s history. The town of 600 has survived the farm crisis of the 1980s, a pandemic, and even another tornado.
Mayor Kevin Zimmerman, who has lived in the area his whole live, said he is working to help residents deal with the loss of one of its own while pulling through another natural disaster.
A major tornado hit the town in 1976 when Zimmerman was 9 years old. He said the damage back then was nothing like the damage caused by Friday’s storms.
Every single block of the town has been impacted. Zimmerman said it’s hard to take.
“It’s tough. It’s tough. ... We’ll get there,” he told 6 News.
Zimmerman said that while the recent tornado caused more material damage than the one years ago, the overall loss was just the same.
“I think somebody died a day later then, too, that I can remember,” he said. “It was a rough one then; this one’s a little worse.”
The mayor points out that the trees in town always suffer from a major storm. They did after this recent storm, and they did back then.
“Back then, we had 100-year-old trees up and down the street, and those trees got torn down that time. And these are 50-year-old trees, and now they’re down again,” he said.
Zimmerman says they’re still counting the number of homes that can’t be lived in, and he’s hoping to help damged business stay in Minden.
“I talked to a lot of businesses — I really think we’re going to get ’em to come back, but we’ll just have to see how things go,” he said.
Right now, things in Miden are not going well. There’s a lot of work to do here.
“We don’t have a water treatment plant right now, or lift station’s all screwed up. I mean, we’re temporary extension cords right now ... So on that end, our water tower did stay up. We had a new water tower 10 years ago; and if you can believe it, last week, we decided to repaint it.”
But theres another side to this story: Local folks are helping to get things clean up. There’s a silver lining here.
“We’ve got a grocery store, a drug store, a doctor in town,” Zimmerman said. “I mean there’s a lot of stuff in a small town in Iowa that a lot of towns don’t have. And we’ve done everything I can for the 28 years I’ve been on the council to keep them people here — and i’m going to keep fighting.”
HOW TO HELP
Mayor Zimmerman said Monday that right now, they don’t need outside volunteers to help out in Minden. The town is too small for all the people who want to help and all the traffic that comes along with that.
Instead, they recommend giving to a special fund set up to help the town of Minden rebound from the storm. That fund isn’t quite ready to accept donations yet, but should be announced in the coming days.
In the meantime, donations can be made to the Southwest Iowa Emergency Relief Fund, which will help those throughout the region who were impacted by the storms.
TORNADO RECOVERY
How to help — and find help
Here are ways you can assist those in Nebraska and Iowa who are recovering from tornadoes that hit on Friday, April 26.
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