Muscatine – March 6th of 2017 brought severe thunderstorms and 8 confirmed tornadoes to the Quad Cities area.
Two were confirmed with winds at least 115 miles per hour.
In Muscatine, 80 homes and businesses sustained minor damage.
But it was the collapse of a church;s organ which drew the most attention.
‘It did a lot of very visible damage to our church. We had a chimney, a huge chimney, and it broke the top half of it off, and came crashing down. It’s been very humbling, the help that we’ve had. We had people knocking on the door that very first day, offering to come in and help clean up and clean up the parking lot…’
‘All the damage has been repaired. We’ve got just a handful of loose ends that we’re trying to tie up.”
While the damage at Wesley United Methodist Church was starkly visible, not all damage from the tornado was so apparent.
Next door, the First Presbyterian Church also sustained damage from the then nearly 100 mile per hour winds.
‘We found out a day later that the roof had lifted, and they said it was seconds away from being torn off completely. So, we had a lot of cracked rafters and things like that.”
‘We did not sustain any visible damage except for a broken window, so people, when they know about it, they have been very good about reaching out, and just, we’re doing okay. And I think the main thing is nobody was hurt in that storm, and that now we’re all being put back together, and that’s good.
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