The line of destruction left behind from the EF-5 tornado that hit Parkersburg in 2008 is still visible on Thursday, May 23, 2013 from the roof of Aplington-Parkersburg high school. The south side of town is marked by young trees and new homes. (Kelsey Kremer/The Gazette)
PARKERSBURG – Faith and small-town bonds widely reputed to live only in faulty memories helped this Butler County town become a model for disaster recovery, community leaders say.
Those same values, widely publicized in the weeks after an EF5 tornado blew up the southern third of the town five years ago today, continue to attract young families to Parkersburg. Mayor Perry Bernard said.
“Small-town America still exists. People are moving here because they want to raise their kids in a place like Parkersburg. Houses don’t stay on the market very long,” said Bernard, whose house was one of nearly 300 destroyed when the mile-wide tornado struck Parkersburg in the middle of a Memorial Day weekend.
The tornado, which continued along a 43-mile course through New Hartford, Dunkerton, Hazleton and Lamont, “has brought everyone in Parkersburg to an even higher level of friendship and support. It taught us all to value our friends and neighbors,” Bernard said.
Rep. Bruce Braley, in town Friday to highlight the community’s recovery, recently inserted a statement into the Congressional Record, citing Parkersburg as “a model for recovery after a natural disaster.”
Braley, a Democrat representing Iowa’s 1st district, in town five years earlier to help with the cleanup, recalled sorting through the debris in an elderly couple’s home, asking if they wanted to save certain items.
“None of the stuff was theirs. Their stuff was all somewhere else, probably miles away,” he said.
Parkersburg’s rebuilding effort is a “reflection of the community’s commitment to come back stronger and better,” Braley said.
During Friday’s tour, the only sign that a killer tornado had ever visited the town is the utter lack of shade in the sparkling new residential neighborhoods. Saplings now stand in the place of the large trees that had dominated pre-2008 aerial photos.
A stone bench at the entry to the new City Hall commemorates the seven Parkersburg residents killed in the tornado: Richard and Ethel Mulder, Shirley Luhring, Ruth Knock, Charles Horan, Raymond Meyocks and Bertha Eckhoff.
At the new high school, built like City Hall with Federal Emergency Management Agency funds, Superintendent Jon Thompson said enrollment in the Aplington-Parkersburg School District has increased 8 percent since 2008, while Parkersburg’s population has remained flat at just below 1,900.
Like Mayor Bernard, Thompson said Parkersburg’s ethos of community pride and support and a strong work ethic appeals to young families.
The community’s post-tornado recovery has taken that ethos to another level, he said.
Thompson said the new school has a heavily reinforced basement wrestling room that would provide safety for 1,000 people in the event of another tornado.
Mayor Bernard said most of the new homes, including his, have safe rooms.
The EF5 tornado that killed 24 earlier this week in Moore, Okla., caused some flashbacks in Parkersburg, the mayor said.
Many residents are still dealing with post-traumatic stress syndrome, he said.
