Branches and straw blew down streets, rusted gutters sat tangled in trees, and pieces of insulation scattered the ground in Hills, Iowa, on Saturday. Tarps flapped in the wind over broken windows and replaced entire walls of some houses.

Tornadoes struck Iowa Friday, causing heavy damage to several residential areas. Among the most affected areas was Hills, a city in Johnson County. Citizens on Oak Ridge Avenue started assessing necessary repairs on Friday and clearing debris.

Hills resident Helen Alexander was watching the tornado from her kitchen when it hit her street.

“I had the front door open and the patio door open, and I’ve been through a few tornadoes on the farm,” Alexander said. “And there’s a pressure change, and all of a sudden it was totally different.”

She rushed to close her front door and move farther inside, but the tornado had completely passed within a minute. The storm left a piece of her roofing in her front entry, barring the front door. In other areas of her house, Alexander found gaping holes or missing siding — evidence of what she calls rampant “little damage.”

Houses along Oak Ridge Avenue, a small Hills neighborhood off Highway F62, received the brunt of the impact. A house near the highway almost completely collapsed while its next-door neighbor’s entire wall was torn away.

Based on the path of debris littering the streets and the yards, the tornado abruptly changed direction the next block over and began to move farther into the neighborhood before veering over a stretch of empty field.

The houses that were not directly in the tornado’s path still experienced damage caused by high wind speeds that sent pieces of trees, scrap metal, and chunks of other structures through the walls.

Similar damage was evident throughout the neighborhood. Resident Yancey Forkner and his wife watched a Casey’s convenience store sign tear through their house. Meanwhile, resident Jonathan Goldsmith, who lives  two streets over, lost his entire fence and everything in his yard, which his wife posits might have diverted the tornado from their house.

Across Alexander’s block, resident Nancy Roselund experienced similar damage along with the destruction of one room of her house that faced the yard. Roselund’s home had just been completed in 2022.

Roselund’s home is one of three in the neighborhood that was contracted by Statler Construction. Jeremy Statler, the construction company’s owner, helped Roselund where he could with repairs, disposing of debris, and reinforcing the roof.

Having repaired other houses after similar natural disasters in the past, Statler said he is upset for his clients and the way they are burdened with finding the physical and financial resources to rebuild.

“Regular customers have been dreaming about building a home for years,” Statler said. “They have ideas, they know what they want — we’re building their dream. When I’m working with somebody who goes through a tragedy like this, it’s terrible because yesterday, they had no intentions of this happening to their home. They were planning to live there forever.”

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Despite the tracks of devastation through the neighborhood, Hills is heartened by the way the community has united in its efforts to recover.

The Iowa City Robotics Team also helped clear the Roselund property. Team member Matthew Bedell reached out to affected communities after the storm cleared and offered the team’s assistance; Hills accepted.

Bedell, Benjamin Kleiman, Diana Tivanskaya, and Tadamichi Goto drove to the neighborhood and started collecting debris off the streets. They also tended to Roselund, who directed them around her property to where their services were needed the most.

The team hoped to return the following day with more members.

“It’s interesting how you hear on the news about how it’s a smaller storm and there haven’t been any casualties since this morning, and that makes you think that it’s not really that big of a deal,” Kleiman said. “But when you go to some of these smaller communities and you look at the damage and how it’s affecting people’s lives, it really is unbelievable.”

In the wake of this disaster, residents of Hills have demonstrated their resilience and remain hopeful toward the future.

“Disaster is disaster, it is what it is, and you just pick up and move on,” Roselund said, glancing toward her garlic plants, which had still managed to sprout in spite of the storm. “It’s an experience to remember.”