'Lucky again': Tornado kills one in rural southwest Iowa; neighbors describe near-misses

CORNING — A stylist was coloring Betsy Akin's hair Tuesday afternoon when she received an alert.

A tornado had touched down at the Corning Airport, and the dangerous cyclone was whipping through rural Adams County. Akin and the rest of the beauty shop took cover. She called her husband, Scott, a county supervisor and retired lumberman.

Pausing his "county work" on the basement computer, Scott Akin walked outside to watch.

"Get the dogs," Betsy, 62, texted him at 3:08 p.m.

Scott grabbed their pets, Rem and Chase, and carried them to the family's safe room, a small enclosure of concrete under the steps. Then he moved to the patio to resume watching the storm.

The sight mesmerized him. He saw funnels moving through the pasture that surrounds his rural home. But while he expected a dirty cyclone, lifting and rotating branches and twisted metal, Scott saw a clear, clean wall of wind. Some invisible phenomenon shifted the sky.

"It felt just like a disturbance, you know?" said Scott, 75. "The air would move. It was big. It had to be really wide. … You could see right through it."

Scott heard the wind whistle. He retreated into the basement, closed the patio door behind him. A nearby window shattered. He waited. He breathed. He walked upstairs.

"It was funny," he said. "You thought there would be a feeling. But I couldn't feel anything."

Silently, the storm had wrecked the Akins' home on Iowa Highway 148, about 3 miles north of Corning's center. The force peeled away gray shingles, ripped off chunks of roof, collapsed walls and spit out a bouquet of interwoven insulation and wood throughout the front yard.

The winds uprooted a detached garage, leaving behind bent metal and chunks of lumber.

In town, Betsy called her sister-in-law, who drove her to their home. The fire department and ambulance drivers had responded to the scene, blocking the highway. Betsy found Scott down the road, waiting at a nearby business while responders worked the scene.

"We're overwhelmed," Betsy said Wednesday morning as her brothers and friends piled up the yard debris.

"This community, it was unbelievable," she said. "They were out here just pronto. We have people with trailers, backing up into the yard. Taking all of our furniture. Opening up storage sheds for us."

"I don't think the last board had hit (the ground), and they were out here," Scott said.

Adams County officials were unavailable to comment on the extent of the damage Wednesday while they were out making assessments. The National Weather Service also had a team on the ground assessing damage in Clarinda, Creston and Corning.

But in the minutes after the storm passed their home, the Akins realized the pain that the tornados could have inflicted had Scott not retreated to the basement in time Tuesday. Emergency workers found a woman's body in the pasture across the highway, about 100 yards from the road, Scott said.

About 300 yards beyond that, he said, responders found a vehicle — presumably the victim's. The vehicle remained Tuesday, folded and crumpled on itself, mud and grass caked to the roof. The storm's impact had stripped away the front and shattered the windshield.

More: Watch: Drone video shows destructive tornado topple wind turbines near Greenfield, Iowa

Adams County authorities confirmed the death Wednesday, though they did not identify the victim.

Around Adams County, other residents cleaned up debris from splintered trees, blown-out windows and scattered belongings. Power poles stood bent, sometimes perpendicular to the ground. Their wires crossed closed roads as they tangled into a dangerous web. Many residents told the Des Moines Register that they felt lucky, that all they had to worry about was what to do with the new lumber, how to replace their gutters and when the electric company could restore power.

Down the road from the Akins, Tom Schafer of Schafer Welding said he saw the funnel from his office on Tuesday. He watched the storm, expecting the funnel to move to his left or to his right. The cyclone sped forward.

Schafer, 48, ran into his shop and huddled under a welding bench, the safest spot he could think of.

"I ain't going nowhere," he said.

On Wednesday, he scanned the yard of his business. The storm had flattened a neighbor's metal building. But the tornado spared his property, save for a horse trailer that toppled onto its side and a truck trailer that flipped.

"The old man was looking over me on that one," said Schafer, who started the business with his late father, Ed, in 1982.

"Lucky again," said his friend, Corey Barton, 52, who owns a local excavating business.

"Yup," Schafer said. "We've had some pretty strong (expletive) (expletive) over the years."

Stanley Roberts, 74, stood in his Kale Avenue yard in blue overalls and a sun hat as a friend hauled a chained-up tree off his property. Limbs of maple and black walnut trees scattered throughout his land.

"This," he said," is about 30 seconds of a tornado."

Roberts and his wife, Barbara, have lived on the 240-acre farm and orchard for 50 years. Tornadoes had threatened the area over the years, and a couple of hail storms had forced him to replace his roof. But for the most part, storms missed him over the last five decades.

On Tuesday, he received a tornado warning on his phone. Roberts walked outside and peered south, looking for funnels near the Akins' home. As he did, he heard a whistle. A tornado was heading toward him from the west.

Roberts ran through the garage, toward the basement, where Barbara waited. He was running downstairs when the storm hit.

"It felt like a vacuum," Barbara said.

The trees twisted the home's gutters and ripped away a small swath of siding over their kitchen window. But otherwise, the home was spared yet again. Roberts said his son, a woodworker, would salvage something from the trees — some furniture, perhaps.

"I always wondered what this would look like," he said, laughing. "Now I know."

Around the corner, on 183rd Street, neighbors and friends helped the Tye family clean their yard. The family's four children were home Tuesday afternoon when the storm hit. They rushed to the basement and waited 12 minutes, listening to the rain. After the tornado passed, they stayed in the basement until their grandfather arrived.

Outside, they found a window shattered, the top of their brick chimney broken and their shed destroyed.

Winds pushed their boat just a couple of feet. But the storm flung the family's camper about a quarter of a mile across the road, stripping the vehicle down to its frame and wheels.

On Wednesday, the Tyes searched across the road from their home, looking for their belongings in a thicket of tree limbs. They found a vinyl sign from their camper, broken in pieces.

"Hey," 9-year-old Arizona Tye said to her father, Andrew, reaching into the broken trees. "I found one of your socks."

Tyler Jett is an investigative reporter for the Des Moines Register. Reach him at tjett@registermedia.com, 515-284-8215, or on X at @LetsJett. He also accepts encrypted messages at tjett@proton.me.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Tornado kills driver near Corning; southwest Iowans clear damage