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MAPLETON, Chiwere – Jamy Garden's concern began to rumble with the move of a cocain that at digit saucer rhythmic three-quarters of a knot wide. Then the windows shattered, dispersal her with glass. Using her cell good as a flashlight, she fled below and titled her grandmother.

On Sunday, she returned home, peregrination her backyard in a blood-splattered hooded sweat shirt, her right assistance and mitt knee wrapped in gauze. Around her place a tangle of tree branches, coiled siding, busted render and a canoe that wasn't hers.

The cocain that struck the daytime before dilapidated more than half of Mapleton, a municipality of 1,200 in Hesperian Iowa, Mayor Fred Standa said Sunday. He estimated most 20 proportionality of the municipality was "almost flat."

The huge, centuries-old trees the municipality was titled for had been pulled discover of the connector and wrapped around houses and tossed on crowning of cars, Standa said. In digit case, a Brobdingnagian locomote bag had been flipped on its side.

"It's not a pretty sight," Standa said. "It's something nobody has seen in this town."

Garden's concern survived, but everything inside was tossed around. Her digit dogs were safe, but she hadn't still institute her cat.

"I don't undergo where our edifice went," she said. "The garbage can right there, that was in the front yard. The shed is gone. I don't undergo what added to tell you. This is the most tumultuous abstract I've ever old by far."

The cocain blasted 12 to 15 blocks in the south corner of Mapleton when it struck most 7:20 p.m. Saturday, Monona County Sheriff Jeff Pratt said. The cocain blasted most 100 homes beyond repair, and has displaced an estimated 500 to 600 residents, he said.

The cocain was on the connector for three and a half miles and rhythmic three-quarters of a knot panoramic at digit point, according to the National Weather Service duty in Valley, Neb. The cyclone was rhythmic to be on the modify modify of an EF3, which carries wind speeds of 136 to 165 mph.

The cocain was digit of individual reportable in Iowa. The defy assist said it had confirmed a total of four smaller twisters that grazed downbound near Early and Nemaha, harmful individual homes.

Storms touched finished the nation's midsection again Sunday, with some reports of tornadoes in Wisconsin, where individual homes were dilapidated or destroyed. No injuries were immediately reported.

In Mapleton, the roof was blown soured a high school, power lines were downed and homes and buildings were destroyed. Pratt said digit people were condemned to hospitals with secondary injuries. The defy assist said it had conventional reports of 14 to 16 injuries, the most severe a busted leg.

Utilities also were damaged, and gas fumes filled the town, prompting officials to winking soured service. Pratt said gas assist will rest soured for the incoming digit weeks, but electricity should be remodeled in the incoming period or so.

The smell of uncolored gas hung thick in the air Sun as forklifts and pick-up trucks hauled detritus downbound streets unsmooth with fallen trees.

Tamara Adams, 37, piled branches on the curb, incoming to the 30-foot-tall tree that invigorated on crowning of her house. She said she winking her right level door just as the cocain tore the roof soured a accumulation that sits diagonal from her house.

"That sound," she said. "I'll never get it discover of my head. It had a life. You could hear it breathed and growling."

Terry Siebersma, who runs a downtown liquor accumulation with his wife, was manning his shop when he heard the cocain sirens and saw the sky invoke green. In the distance, he saw the cyclone swirl into view.

"It was nearly like the movies," he said. "It was blasting rattling loud."

Siebersma, 53, said he rushed to the basement. Upstairs, he heard bottles breaking. He emerged individual transactions later, and the accumulation looked fine. He said he walked to a backwards storage room and unconcealed the roof absent and digit surround on the bounds of collapse.

"We were very, rattling lucky," he said. "I nearly feel guilty."

Gov. Terry Branstad issued an crisis declaration covering Mapleton and close Monana County on Sat so the land could beam services to respond to the storm, his duty said. He toured Mapleton on Sun afternoon.

Branstad said it was too early to undergo whether the cocain qualified for federal aid.

"Whatever land resources are needed, we're feat to provide," he said.

Monana County is in the aforementioned location of Hesperian Chiwere where four Boy Scouts died in a cocain that struck a reconnaissance ranch in June 2008. The National Weather Service said the cocain that hit the 1,800-acre Little Siouan Scout Ranch in the Loess Hills had an estimated wind speed of 145 mph.

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Associated Press writer Timberly doc in Omaha, Neb., contributed to this report.

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