The Iowa City tornado: 5 years gone

Deep in the older reaches of Facebook, way back from 2006, are hundreds of UI alum photo albums called “We’ve got cows.”

I can’t blame people for taking advantage of what happened. Shit — I would have done the same if I had had a digital camera back then; why pass up the opportunity? But the number of people posting “We’ve got cows” albums was amazing. It far surpassed the cliché threshold.

Five years ago tonight Iowa City was struck by an EF2 tornado. It was the first ever to hit the city. For the most part it followed the course of Ralston Creek, trashing homes and trees from College Green to Hickory Hill after destroying the Dairy Queen on Riverside Drive and St. Patrick’s Catholic Church on Court Street.

Though I did not see it I heard it. The stereotypical “freight train” analogy is perfect, though I would say it sounded more like 20 freight trains running alongside each other.

Though no lives were lost, many of the streetscapes were altered. Huge trees were uprooted or ripped to shreds. The high, dense, green canopy of foliage from the century-old oaks (or whatever they were) in College Green was blown away. The park was my favorite place to lounge in the shade, read, and write between classes in college, and after the tornado it was almost completely bare of any vegetation. For weeks the thick trunks laid on their sides waiting to be cut into manageable pieces. The creek along Jefferson was also ripped bare. However, new saplings and bushes grew quickly, replacing everything that had been ripped up.