‘Sixty Seconds of Horror’ Hit Small Town in Iowa

Houses lay crumpled to their foundations and hundreds of thousands of people were without power Saturday after the Midwest was battered by storms, including a tornado that leveled this tiny Iowa town.

“Sixty seconds of horror and weeks and months of rehabilitation and rebuilding,” said Gov. Tom Vilsack, who took a walking tour of Bradgate, population 100, in northwestern Iowa.

Fifteen people in Bradgate and nearby Rolfe were injured, though none seriously, in the Friday night tornado, said Humboldt County Emergency Management Director Doug Wood. The tornado made 30 of Bradgate’s 40 homes uninhabitable, he said.

“We were all terrified,” said Ed Froisland, who huddled in his living room with his family as the tornado blew the roof off his house. “It sounded like a bomb was going off.”

Sheriff Dean Kruger was hit in the leg with a piece of wood after he got out of his truck during the tornado. “I just laid down in the ditch and watched the wood and timber fly past,” Kruger said.

Debris littering a small park Saturday included a mattress, a kitchen sink and a toilet. A pair of men’s overalls hung from a tree branch.

Helping with cleanup Saturday were the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Iowa National Guard. Hundreds of volunteers also helped cut trees with chain saws and put wood and metal debris in piles.

While Iowa was hardest-hit, Friday’s severe weather also knocked out power through parts of West Virginia, Nebraska, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Michigan authorities blamed the storm for three deaths -- all due to trees falling on cars Friday.

Tornado Alley, a swath running from west Texas through Oklahoma and Kansas to Iowa, is ripe for stormy conditions because of colliding air masses that occur each spring.

Severe thunderstorms swept across much of West Virginia, from the Ohio River to the Virginia border; several funnel clouds were seen, but no tornadoes were confirmed.

Hundreds of thousands of customers lost power after the storms, and many were not expected to get it back until sometime today. About 160,000 customers in Michigan were still without electricity Saturday afternoon: 140,000 in Ohio, 60,000 in West Virginia and 6,000 in Pennsylvania.

At least two tornadoes touched down in central Nebraska, damaging two farmsteads, but no injuries were reported, the National Weather Service said. The storm in Nebraska also dropped hail the size of golf balls.

In Ohio, two men hit by lightning in separate strikes were taken to hospitals with injuries that were not life-threatening, said Jeff Walker, director of the Licking County Emergency Management Agency.

And the nasty weather didn’t appear to be quite over Saturday afternoon: Heavy rain continued to hit Ohio, which was expecting more today, and a tornado watch was issued for many counties in southern Michigan.