I didn't find out until Friday afternoon that, Thursday night, Iowa City, where I spent my four years as an undergraduate, was ravaged by tornadoes. Not only do I still have friends there--all of whom seem to be okay, fortunately--but I consider Iowa City to be my home town. I enjoyed my time there, considerably more than I ever did my years growing up in Council Bluffs. I spent hours learning its streets, following creeks and trails, trekking out to the edges where the town trickles off into cloned housing developments and rural roads...I never quite stomped around the entire place, but I covered a hell of a lot of it. Even after a few years away, it's all still familiar to me. I've been hunting down all the photographs I possibly can of the aftermath...I feel, oddly, somehow derelict in my duty for not being there to weather the weather with the town in which I began figuring out how this whole life business works. I'm a sap. Tap me and make syrup.
Suddenly this is going somewhere I never intended. Let's just look at the pictures.
Here are a bunch. The completely destroyed thing near the railroad bridge used to be a Dairy Queen. That big orange brick not-destroyed thing is the Christian Science Reading Room on College Street, just three blocks from my old studio apartment. Then there's the destroyed sorority house, just a block up and a block over on Washington, if I recall correctly. The whole area had its power knocked out, I'm told, and it was still down as of Friday night. Then there's the annihilated church, St. Patrick's, which I never really paid much attention to while I was in town. Their god could not protect them.
St. Pat's already has its own gallery of storm damage photos, conveniently. The destruction there is very picturesque. Lots of interesting details of the church's structure, for architecture geeks.
The Daily Iowan has a photo gallery here. Lots of flipped cars downtown. I hear the police were trying to empty out the Ped Mall due to a gas leak. They've got a story on the whole event here. They may ask you to register for free. Or just get a login from BugMeNot.
My dear friends Clake and Klake have more here, and also here, and indeed here.
The University of Iowa has some photos of its own, including this one of some poor schmuck's car drowning in a creek. And this shot of the Ped Mall area from above, showing the roofs torn off.
I'd actually forgotten how big tornadoes could be. Hadn't really been through a significant one since the late '80s, when a real monster ravaged Council Bluffs. Blew houses to matchsticks a block north and a block south of us, cut off power for days, ripped up trees blocking off the streets...The sky always turned a funny green colour beforehand; I used to hover out in the front yard watching for funnel clouds and dodging hail until the last moment.
UPDATE (4/16): Here's video footage of the tornado that molested Iowa City. The hubris of Dairy Queen has clearly angered the gods.
Posted by aloysius at April 15, 2006 06:16 PM |