Blown Awayby Amy Scheer
your story
Relief comes to student’s family after Parkersburg tornado
When winds became too strong to continue a card game with fellow campers, junior Carrie Manifold and her family thought they’d check in with neighbors back home in Parkersburg, Iowa, 20 miles west, to see if the storm had passed their way.
Carrie’s mom, Diane, dialed the number and heard screaming. Their friends were trapped in the basement by what was left of their house, they told her. Through a window, this frightened family could see a neighbor lying on the ground where her home used to be.
Between 4:45 and 6 p.m. on Sunday, May 25, an EF5 tornado with winds at an estimated 205 mph devastated northeast Iowa, taking the lives of eight people and injuring 70 others. The storm blew away a third of Parkersburg’s buildings, 350 in all. When Carrie’s father, Tom, the city’s chief EMT and a gas/electric serviceman, got in the car to head back, he didn’t know if his house would be among those destroyed.
He reached the site of his home of 24 years to find only a wall and part of a staircase sitting on an open foundation.
But right where the garage had been, Tom’s work boots were waiting. Taking no time to dwell on his own loss, he changed out of his camping sandals and began helping everyone else.
Lost and Found
“I’d never seen something so terrible in my life,” says Tom, well acquainted with the “before” picture of the small town of 1,900 people. “It looked like someone had come through there with fighter jets and dropped bombs.”
Amidst all the wreckage, the Manifolds prayed they’d find a small blue booklet. Carrie was scheduled to leave for a Northwestern Summer of Service trip to Bahrain in just four days. How would she ever find her passport?
She called Tommy Moon, Northwestern’s director of missions, who acted quickly to delay Carrie’s departure date and prepared to replace necessary paperwork. A day or two later, good news came.
Although Carrie’s car was found upside down on top of a house down the block, her passport and an encouragement journal from friends sat intact under a fallen wall. Pairs of neatly folded pants, which had been left on the bed next to the passport, flew only a short distance; a neighbor would wash the pile for Carrie to pack.
It appears God wanted Carrie to go to Bahrain.
“My passport could have been in a cornfield or all the way in Wisconsin,” she says. “God took the trip out of my hands. He would provide not only what I needed, but he would also pile on the blessings.”
Helping Hands
Meanwhile, Moon worked with Marlon Haverdink, the college’s director of service learning, and Barb Dewald, associate dean of spiritual formation, to send a Northwestern service team to aid relief efforts in Parkersburg.
On Friday, June 13, when they got word the Manifolds were ready to receive outside help, they e-mailed faculty, staff and students. By Monday, 24 people had volunteered to go.
The Northwestern group arrived on June 22 and registered with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, requesting to work on the Manifolds’ property. Members of the team helped clear the house’s foundation of debris and gutted the basement, successfully finishing the job before leaving three days later. Some group members worked at a half dozen other sites as well, aiding in flood recovery or skill-specific jobs. (Bruce Roetman, a member of the maintenance staff, found his carpentry skills in high demand.)
The Manifolds’ church, First Congregational, housed and fed the team.
“We’re having to allow everyone to help us, so I wanted to do something to help them,” says Diane. “They’ve done so much for us. From day one, as soon as Carrie called, all the help Northwestern offered, the prayers, the support—it meant so much to us.”
Ashley Wright, a Northwestern sophomore on the trip, left impressed with the hope and joy of the people of Parkersburg. “Their attitude was, ‘It’s just stuff. We can replace it. We’re just thankful to be alive.’”
It got her to thinking: “I have all this stuff in my room. It’s a chaotic place, and it’s just stuff. If it got lost in a tornado, I’d be OK. Does that make me who I am, all this stuff?”
Not All Gone
By August, Carrie was back from Bahrain, and her mother and father had moved from their hotel room to a rental house. They’ve told their story to many people along the way.
“People would ask us if we lost everything, and we’d say, ‘Yeah, we lost everything,’” says Diane.
But in time they changed that answer, realizing they were overwhelmed with gratitude for what the storm left behind.
“We lost our house and all our stuff, but we didn’t lose everything,” they’d respond. “We have our family, and we have our friends.” 
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