Lieutenant Governor Patty Judge, who also serves as the state’s Homeland Security Advisor, will visit some towns in southeast Iowa today that were hit by a tornado last Friday. Judge is scheduled to tour the Muscatine County towns of Grandview and Fruitland, which were hit the hardest by the storms. Iowa Homeland Security officials say 39 homes were destroyed in Louisa and Muscatine counties.
Twenty-nine of those were in Fruitland, which has a population of around 1,000 people. Another 28 homes are described as having major damage and 81 with minor damage. Officials estimate the storms’ infrastructure damage at two-point-seven million dollars. That would include costs to remove debris and clean up damage to parks and public buildings.
David Miller, the administrator of the state’s Emergency Management division, says the tally of damage to private property isn’t quite complete. Miller says it looks like about 243 total homes were hit.
There is a preliminary damage estimate for publicly-owned property. He says it looks like about “It looks like we have about $2.75 million in damages to public facilities,” Miller says. “That’s everything from municipal utilities to parks and recreation facilities to public buildings.”