Southwestern Iowa was reeling Wednesday after a destructive wave of storms, including a tornado, swept across the state the day before, leaving five people dead and at least 35 injured, the authorities said.
The tornado devastated the city of Greenfield, where survey teams estimated it had wind gusts of up to 165 miles an hour, powerful enough to cause major damage to buildings.
“It is just gut-wrenching,” Gov. Kim Reynolds said at a news conference on Wednesday morning in Greenfield, where large swaths of the town were destroyed by the tornado. “It is just horrific; it is hard to describe.”
The storm devastated Greenfield, a city of about 2,000 people, where video footage showed destroyed homes, mangled cars, and roads covered with debris after a reported tornado swept through the town in the afternoon. The Adair County Health System hospital in the city sustained tornado damage, and patients were transferred to other nearby hospitals, the Iowa Department of Public Safety said in a statement.
The city announced a curfew on Tuesday from 10 p.m. until 7 a.m. local time as it assessed the death toll and damage. “This tornado has devastated a good portion of this town and community,” Sgt. Alex Dinkla of the Iowa State Patrol said at a news conference on Tuesday evening.
In Adams County, near Greenfield, television footage showed that three wind turbines had been toppled. One appeared to have caught fire, releasing a large plume of smoke.
A flood warning was in place for Butler and Black Hawk counties, northeast of Des Moines, for much of Wednesday.
The storms began on Tuesday morning with pea-sized hail, strong winds and heavy rains sweeping through Madison County, southwest of Des Moines. Multiple tornadoes were reported in southwest Iowa, as well as several north of Des Moines. At one point on Tuesday night, more than 13 million people in parts of Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Missouri and Wisconsin were under tornado watches.
It was the latest bout of severe weather to strike the Midwest in recent weeks. Earlier storms have killed dozens of people across multiple states and injured many more. There have been more than 150 preliminary reports of tornadoes in Iowa, Illinois and Missouri so far this year. Most of those reports occurred before May and June, typically the peak period for tornadic weather in these states.
Orlando Mayorquín contributed reporting.
