By James Beltran
Associated Press
Tuesday, May 27, 2008

PARKERSBURG, Iowa, May 26 -- Half of this small town lay in ruins or showed heavy damage Monday, a day after a deadly tornado ripped through a stretch of northern Iowa.

The tornado killed four in Parkersburg and two others in nearby New Hartford. In neighboring Minnesota, a child was killed by violent weather in a suburb of St. Paul.

"You really are overwhelmed when you see it," Iowa Gov. Chet Culver (D) said at a news conference Monday after touring the Parkersburg area. "You can't imagine this kind of devastation, homes completely gone. And to see people trying to sort through their belongings is very difficult."

Rescuers continued picking through the wreckage in search of possible victims, although officials said they were hopeful that no one else remained to be found.

In addition to those killed, about 70 people were injured. Two of them were in critical condition Monday.

Officials counted 222 houses destroyed and 400 more damaged. Butler County Sheriff Jason Johnson said that accounted for about half of the houses in Parkersburg.

The buildings destroyed included the city hall, the high school, and the lone grocery store and gas station.

"There's so much hurt here, I don't know where to start," said Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R), who owns a farm near New Hartford.

Warning sirens sounded early enough to give residents time to seek shelter, said Parkersburg Mayor Bob Haylock.

"Without that, we would have a tremendous amount of injuries and loss of life," Haylock said. "People were down in their basements and waiting it out."

Even so, Haylock said, most of those killed in Parkersburg were in basements. All were adults, he said.

Diane Goodrich rode out the storm in her basement with her husband and three neighbors.

"The noise was just unbelievable," Goodrich said Monday as she searched through the ruins of her home. "Our ears were popping. We could hear trees flying over us. We could hear every piece of furniture that left the house."

North of St. Paul, Minn., a violent storm struck the town of Hugo, killing a 2-year-old boy and critically injuring his young sister, officials said. The children's parents also were hospitalized, as were three other adults and another child.

Rural Oklahoma was battered Saturday, and storms in Kansas a day earlier killed at least two people.

About 100 people have been killed by U.S. twisters so far this year, the worst toll in a decade, according to the National Weather Service.