The National Weather Service is confirming five tornadoes in Tuesday’s severe storms, but officials in southwest Iowa’s Cass County believe they were also hit with a twister, which would be number-six.
Mike Kennon, the county’s emergency management coordinator, says he took photos throughout the community of Anita, which — at minimum — was hit by severe straight-line winds.
“There’s tree damage. There was some minor structure damage on about a dozen homes,” Kennon says. “I think their main concern was maybe it was a small twister that had gone through there, and quite frankly, maybe there was, but we wanted to collect that information and send it to the National Weather Service.”
Cass County is among the six counties where Governor Kim Reynolds has issued a disaster proclamation, which provides grants to help residents who meet income requirements to make repairs, replace lost clothing or food, and pay for temporary housing.
“We’ve got to meet income criterias, so not a ton of people are probably going to qualify,” Kennon says, “but certainly those that would qualify, I mean, I wanted to make sure that if we did have damages for low income, uninsured type damages, that we have those people covered.”
In addition to broken windows and damaged roofs and siding to 12 homes, he says there’s damage at an Anita nursing home, a golf course and at Lake Anita State Park. The five other counties under the disaster proclamation are: Allamakee, Des Moines, Fayette, Henry, and Lee.
(By Ric Hanson, KJAN, Atlantic)