A devastating tornado hit Marshalltown, Iowa, on Thursday afternoon, bulldozing through its downtown and leaving the city’s daily newspaper, the Times-Republican, without power.
A staff report shared in sparse but powerful language what being there was like.
Four emergency alerts pinged through on cell phones. Sirens rang through downtown twice. At first, it seemed like nothing. Then it hit.
Devastating.
On Friday, publisher Abigail Pelzer wrote about taking shelter in the newsroom, then emerging to see a dramatically different downtown.
Then we did what we do best. We got boots on the ground and began collecting stories and photos. While posting to social media with spotty cell phone connections, we put a plan together to get out a newspaper.
Pelzer reported that the newspaper relocated to the Tama News-Herald, a sister publication in the county 20 miles to the east, and how area news organizations were pitching in. (According to the Times-Republican's site, the newspaper has eight people in editorial.)
We sought help from our colleagues in Webster City, who waited patiently to print this edition of the T-R. Our gracious friends in the newsroom at The Messenger in Fort Dodge are sending two of their best to help us with coverage on Friday. Our former assistant copy editor, Pam Rodgers Pratt, joined us from Newton to work well into the night designing pages for us. Media friends from across the state have reached out and cheered us on. Without the generosity of our colleagues, friends and families we couldn’t have got work done, we couldn’t have printed a paper today.
And they did get that paper out. Here’s editor Emily Barske, who returned to lead her hometown paper July 8. Her tweet echoes Capital Gazette reporter Chase Cook's message after five people in his newsroom were murdered in an attack last month:
We got the dang paper out. https://t.co/LDrjLWLzBP
— Emily Barske (@emilybarske) July 20, 2018
So far, no casualties from the tornado have been reported. The Des Moines Register reported that five tornadoes hit central Iowa on Thursday. In Marshalltown, a staff report on the aftermath ended with a defiant, rallying note.
As darkness fell, the noise generated by chainsaws, reconstruction, and various business alarms created a devastatingly eerie backdrop for the end of the unexpected day.
However, Marshalltown carries on. This event will not destroy Marshalltown or its people. Despite this sudden and shattering act of nature, spirits remained high throughout town as the road to recovery began. Mere minutes after the tornado struck, a number of people along Main Street were seen checking on their neighbors, family and friends and began sawing plywood to place over broken windows and doors.
Correction: An earlier version of this story noted that the newspaper relocated to a town to its west. That's incorrect, Tama is east of Marshalltown. We apologize for the error.
