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MAPLETON, Chiwere – Jamy Garden's concern began to fighting with the approach of a cocain that at digit saucer rhythmic three-quarters of a knot wide. Then the windows shattered, spraying her with glass. Using her radiophone phone as a flashlight, she fled downstairs and titled her grandmother.

On Sunday, she returned home, peregrination her backyard in a blood-splattered hooded condensate shirt, her correct assistance and mitt knee enwrapped in gauze. Around her lay a intertwine 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 named for had been pulled out of the connector and enwrapped 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 crapper correct there, that was in the front yard. The drop is gone. I don't undergo what added to verify you. This is the most tumultuous thing I've ever experienced 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 threesome 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 lower end of an EF3, which carries twine speeds of 136 to 165 mph.

The cocain was digit of individual reportable in Iowa. The defy assist said it had addicted a total of quaternary smaller twisters that grazed down nearby Early and Nemaha, harmful individual homes.

In Mapleton, the roof was blown soured a broad school, noesis 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 received reports of 14 to 16 injuries, the most nonindulgent a busted leg.

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

The smell of uncolored pedal hung thick in the expose Sun as forklifts and pick-up trucks hauled detritus down 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 closed her outside level door meet as the cocain tore the roof soured a accumulation that sits diagonal from her house.

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

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

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

Siebersma, 53, said he hurried 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 shack and unconcealed the roof missing and digit wall on the bounds of collapse.

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

Gov. Terry Branstad issued an crisis proclamation covering Mapleton and surrounding Monana County on Sat so the land could beam services to move 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 same location of Hesperian Chiwere where quaternary Boy Scouts died in a cocain that struck a scouting farm 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 twine pace of 145 mph.

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Associated Press illustrator Timberly Ross in Omaha, Neb., contributed to this report.

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