Record-Breaking Tornado Spares Iowa City Bookstores

An Iowa City church following the tornado.

On Thursday, April 13, a tornado with 150-mph winds cut a four-and-a-half mile long swath of damage through Iowa City, and though the Iowa City Press-Citizen reported that the storm is currently on pace to be the most expensive in Iowa since 1990, its destructive path spared the city's independent bookstores.

Jim Harris of Prairie Lights Book, in Iowa City, said that he had been in communication with other booksellers in the area. "There was zero damage to any bookstores," Harris said. "We were really lucky. It came through south of here and hopped around."

"Of the three [book]stores in town, none were affected by the storm," Matt Lage of Iowa Book, LLC, confirmed. "[The tornado] was not wide at all, not like the huge Wizard of Oz-kind. It would go down and touch the ground, then zip back up, and then touch down. It was very arbitrary."

According the National Weather Service, seven tornadoes tore through Johnson County, Iowa on Thursday night, with the worst of the five being the one that went through downtown Iowa City and the University of Iowa. The Associated Press reported that the twisters swept across eastern Iowa "with the worst damage from Iowa City southeast through Nichols, about 20 miles away."

College Green Park in Iowa City

"We close each night at 8:00 p.m. and the storm hit at 8:05 p.m.," Lage reported. "One [employee] was walking home on College Street, and it's a miracle that he wasn't killed. College Green Park, which has a lot of old-growth trees -- two-thirds of those are gone."

Lage told BTW that the entire front portion of a sorority house was torn off and a number of cars were blown into the creek. But for him, the worst part is that the city lost a lot of trees "and we pride ourselves on our trees ... it will take 80, 100 years to replace those," he said.

At Prairie Lights, when the tornado warning came, the store was holding an author event with author Deborah Eisenberg, Harris reported. "She was giving a reading, and we had to move everyone to the basement," he said. However, "a block-and-a-half south of here there's damage, but we never lost power."

All told, the Press-Citizen reported that early estimates for damage caused by the tornado to public property and University of Iowa property to be around $12 million, while damage to private property has not yet been calculated.

Mary Gillette, secretary for the University Bookstore, which is located in the Iowa Memorial Union (IMU) on the campus of the University of Iowa, said her store suffered no damage Thursday -- this despite the fact that a tornado went right through the campus. "We were very fortunate," she said. "There are several students who don't have a home." She said that following the tornadoes, a Red Cross station was set up in the IMU, which has since been moved.

It's rare for a tornado to hit a metropolitan area, Lage said. "It was amazing, and for years and years and years, if you heard a [tornado] siren, you generally would ignore it -- and this one went through the center of town." The next time a siren goes off, "I will now be in my basement cowering," he said with a laugh. --David Grogan