Sunday, August 10, marked five years since the Derecho hit Mount Vernon, Lisbon, Cedar Rapids, and other communities. At the time, we thought that we were struggling through enough with COVID and all the shutdowns and worries we were living through and then out of nowhere a Category 4 hurricane hit Iowa. Who would have thought that a hurricane, of all things, would hit a place as landlocked as Iowa?

All of us who were living here at that time have memories of that day. I was over in Cedar Rapids doing some shopping at Lindale Mall before an upcoming trip to Utah for my cousin’s funeral. I was talking on the phone to my sister who lives in Idaho, but who grew up in Iowa, and rolled down the car window so that she could hear the tornado sirens that had just started to go off. I didn’t think much of it, because the weather forecast for the day had only called for some mild storms.

I said goodbye to her and went into the mall to get my shopping done. Before I knew it, I was being ushered, along with other customers, into a small storage room because of the storm that was raging outside. Soon my husband was texting me images and short videos from Mount Vernon of what the storm looked like at our house. I watched a tree come down by our garage and completely engulf his Jeep and the grill skate all over the driveway.

When it was finally safe enough to leave the storage room, I crept outside and was relieved to find my car fine, even though all the trees around the mall had been uprooted and tossed around the parking lot. I began my treacherous drive back to Mount Vernon where I encountered traffic lights torn from their poles, live power lines on the streets, and of course trees and branches strewn everywhere. I kept having to take alternate roads as one road after another was blocked by downed trees.

When I finally made it to the outskirts of Mount Vernon, I saw that the storm had been equally bad here. I crept along 1st Street and then 5th Avenue with tears streaming down my face. How could we recover and clean up from this? Trees were everywhere and the destruction to homes was immense. I burst into my house and wrapped my arms around my husband and two daughters who were there, grateful that everyone was all right.

We ventured outside to start the clean up and finally met our neighbors who had moved in during COVID. Wherever you looked, people were helping each other and chainsaws were buzzing away. After people had their homes and property secure, they were off to help other people who were still struggling to set things right.

When I left a day later for my cousin’s funeral, I met a woman in Nebraska who had heard about the Derecho and loaded up her truck with chainsaws, generators, and gas tanks and was driving to Iowa to help out. She saw my license plate and asked if we had been affected and told me how she was coming to help. I asked her if she had family or friends there. She said she didn’t, but she said she just wanted to do something to help out. Tears came to my eyes again as I thanked her for being so kind to help out people in desperate need.

All told, the Derecho destroyed one million trees in Linn County, which created 9.3 million cubic yards of debris when it was collected and hauled away—enough to fill Kinnick Stadium to the brim 15 times. 350,000 households lost power that day, more than one-fourth of all Iowa households. 6 million acres of Iowa corn and soybeans were damaged which was about 20 percent of the state’s farmland.

Cleaning up the Derecho took weeks to do, and even after that, there was still more to do. The first day of school that year was postponed for two weeks because of all the damage and all the families that had been without power for so long. Our church services were cancelled for several weeks and everyone in our congregations were encouraged to meet in the church parking lot prepared to go out and help people in need so that we could put our faith into action.

This was a hard time, especially because it was hot and we all were without power. Sleeping at night in our warm houses was difficult. We had to work together in our neighborhoods to save our food that was going to rot because so few had generators. In our neighborhood, we hooked up some deep freezes to a generator and people brought their food there to save what they could. I know of many neighborhoods that just had big grilling parties and ate what they could before it all went bad.

Recently there were some storms that hit our area that were categorized as “mini Derechos.” Several large branches came down around town and you could hear chainsaws running once again. We were keeping an eye on our neighbor’s house while they were on vacation and they lost a large limb. We decided to get it cut up for them before they came back, since it had done severe damage to their back porch.

We called up a friend to see if she would send over her kids to help out with bringing the limbs to the curb. As we all worked together to take care of this big project, I observed something that had changed in the 5 years since the Derecho of 2020. Several people were out for walks that evening, but not one person stopped to lend a hand to us on this project. No one asked us what had happened or asked if everything was all right after this limb had fallen. What I’ll term as the “Derecho Spirit” was now gone.

I’ve always liked the scripture that says “And behold, I tell you these things that ye may learn wisdom; that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God,” because it reminds me that when I take the time to serve others, I am not only helping them, but I am serving God. When the Derecho hit in 2020, you could see people doing this everywhere. I think that five years later we have gone back to just thinking about ourselves.

A lot of lessons were learned in the Derecho, but I think one of the greatest is that if you can lend a hand to someone in need, go and do it. You never know if one day you might be the person who might be the person who is desperate for help, so whenever you see someone who needs some help, go ahead and assist them. Don’t wait to be asked; just jump in and serve those who obviously need you. As we serve others in need, we serve not only them, but we serve God at the same time.