Tornado damages apartment building, farms in eastern Iowa

OELWEIN, Iowa (AP) - Severe storms damaged an apartment building and several farm buildings and homes in northeast Iowa Saturday night.

A tornado that was spotted in Oelwein, Iowa, tore off part of the wall of a 12-unit apartment building and damaged the siding of a second building in the complex. Oelwein police said no serious injuries were reported.

Lonnie Robbins said he watched the storm moving in before retreating to the bathroom of his ground floor apartment in Oelwein, which is about 150 miles (241.40 kilometers) northeast of Des Moines, Iowa.

“I heard something go whoosh, and I even felt it,” Robbins told the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier. “It ripped the hallway wall off, smacked that into my apartment, and when it did that, it knocked a hole in my apartment.”

Fayette County Sheriff Marty Fisher said the storm knocked down branches and some power lines elsewhere in Oelwein and in rural parts of the county.

Residents of the apartment complex whose homes were damaged sought shelter in a nearby hotel. Resident Jonathan Reinert said the storm damage leaves him without a place to stay during the coronavirus outbreak. Emergency crews wore surgical masks as they responded to the storm damage because of the virus.

“I got no shelter in place now,” Reinert said.

Dubuque County Emergency Management Director Tom Berger said at least six farms were damaged by a tornado near Sherrill, Iowa.

Dianne and Lonnie Klein were at home on their farm near Sherrill, when severe weather alerts began sounding on their phones.

“My husband was watching TV in the basement and he said, ‘You better get down here, get down to the basement,’” Dianne Klein said to the Dubuque Telegraph-Herald. “We were watching on TV, and it was real quiet. It got real calm, then the power went out, and then we heard the roar - it all happened within seconds. We have a little room under our front porch, and we were just able to get into that.”

When the Kleins emerged from shelter, they found extensive damage to the outside of their home and a machine shed had been destroyed.

The storm also destroyed multiple farm buildings and damaged at least two houses north of Potosi, Wisconsin, Grant County Emergency Management Director Steve Braun said. There were no injuries.

Braun said some livestock were killed when barns were knocked down at one farm.