Tornadoes tear through Nebraska and Iowa, demolishing homes. Here are the residents' stories (2024)

Tornadoes tore through eastern Nebraska and southwestern Iowa Friday afternoon, leaving people homeless, hurt and trapped inside basem*nts and businesses.

Reports of damage came in from Lincoln, Waverly, the Elkhorn area of northwest Omaha, Bennington and Washington County in Nebraska and from Pottawattamie County in Iowa. Minden, Iowa, was hit particularly hard.

Tornadoes destroyed multiple homes in the Elkhorn area, completely leveling some and ripping the roofs off others there, as well as in the Bennington area.

“The window was just shaking in and out, we just saw a whole bunch of dust, inhaled a bunch of dust, and then it just started shattering,” said Kohen Filter, standing amid debris outside his family’s destroyed home near 216th and West Maple Road. He said he and his stepmother and sister were in the house but were not injured. They had taken shelter in the basem*nt just before the tornado hit.

The storms blew down trees and power lines, leaving thousands of people without power and many roads closed.

There were no immediate reports of deaths or serious injuries in Omaha. Fire and police chiefs said early Friday evening they knew only of some minor injuries. There were also reports of people being rescued after they were trapped in their basem*nts.

"Nebraskans are no strangers to severe weather and, as they have countless times before, Nebraskans will help Nebraskans to rebuild," Gov. Jim Pillen said.

A tornado struck a BNSF train between Waverly and Lincoln, causing multiple cars to derail. Eppley Airfield, where flights were delayed by hours, suffered damage to the general aviation area and was closed down for about an hour as officials assessed the damage.

Toccara Steele, of Omaha, and work colleagues Whitney Anderson, Suzalyn Bittner and Jessica Welstead were in a plane sitting at Eppley Airfield when they looked outside their windows and saw a tornado touch down a short distance away.

“It was scary as I don’t know what,” Steele said Friday night. “I’m still pacing.”

School kids were kept inside across metropolitan Omaha, like at Omaha’s Washington Elementary School where they watched movies and kept spirits up. Parents took shelter with children at their day care centers and schools as the afternoon storms raged at pick-up time. A reunification center was set up at Elkhorn Middle School for parents who needed to pick up their children after several area schools were in lockdown during the tornado warnings.

Emergency personnel set up command posts as sirens screamed and the Red Cross and Salvation Army began arranging help across the area.

“I am still scared,” Bennington resident Sharon Childers said late Friday afternoon. She saw law enforcement all over her area and houses without their roofs from her front porch near 180th and Bennington Road.

It will be days or longer before the full breadth of the severe weather, which spent hours spawning multiple tornados, large hail and punishing rain, is clear. While the Midwest is used to spring storms, what hit the area on Friday will leave damage for years.

Matt Holiner, Omaha World-Herald meteorologist, said at least seven tornadoes hit near Omaha, Lincoln and western Iowa.

“There’s a good chance that number may increase after the surveys though,” he said. He also said a tornado may have touched down, lifted and touched down again making the early count difficult. In the coming days, the National Weather Service will assess what category the tornadoes fell into.

U.S. Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., visited damaged areas and said he believes at least 100 homes were destroyed. He said it was a miracle that there were no reports of fatalities by Friday evening.

Pillen said he and his administration are working with local officials, emergency management directors and law enforcement leaders in the aftermath. Bacon also said discussions with the White House and federal emergency officials had begun and he expected a federal disaster declaration in the coming days.

"I have ordered that state resources be made available to assist with the emergency response and to support local first responders as they assess the damage,” Pillen said in a statement. “Nebraskans are tough, resilient people, and our neighbors and communities will rally around affected families and businesses to assist them. "

Pillen’s office said people in affected areas should avoid downed power lines and follow all law enforcement directives as work continues to assess the damage.

Hit-and-run tornado but 'people had warning'

The blast that leveled Filter’s family’s house was part of a powerful hit-and-run tornado that flattened or damaged dozens of homes in the Elkhorn neighborhood.

But Omaha Police Chief Todd Schmaderer said the city was fortunate to have so few injuries. Despite the destruction, only two people were transported to hospitals, both with minor injuries, he said. He attributed that remarkable number to the city’s early warning systems, which gave those in the path time to take shelter.

“It seems like our warning systems in the city of Omaha and Douglas County and the surrounding area were highly effective,“ Schmaderer said. “We were not hit upon by a sudden storm. People had warning of this.”

City fire crews responding to 3:50 p.m. calls in Elkhorn near 215th and Maple saw wreckage.

“It appears that many houses are flattened and many houses have suffered significant damage,” Omaha Fire Chief Kathy Bossman said.

Fire officials planned to work through the night, making a detailed canvass of the neighborhood looking for injured people.

Bossman said fire officials were facing numerous obstacles, including down power lines, power outages and gas leaks.

She said the city was also standing up an emergency shelter to help those whose homes were damaged.

Officials said the storm that hit Elkhorn tracked from 215th and Maple north to Fort Street, affecting the Ramblewood, Arbor Ridge, and Arbor View neighborhoods.

There were also reports of significant damage in both Waterloo and Bennington within the county.

'We didn't lose anything you can't replace'

After venting its fury on Elkhorn, the storm headed north and cut a swath through the rolling hills southwest of Bennington.

Jeannie Brown never saw the tornado before it tore through the yard of her hilltop home on 186th Street just north of State Street.

"I was in the basem*nt because I heard it was going to hit Waterloo and Elkhorn. Then we lost power. We had a lot of wind. We came upstairs to this," she said, waving her hand toward her yard. "All of our trees are gone."

Her brick home was intact, at least, though it was splattered with mud. Some siding was gone and windows were broken. The street in front of her house was blocked with broken trees.

"I've lived here my whole life, and I've never been through anything like this," she said. "We didn't lose anything you can't replace."

About a mile away, the storm also caused widespread damage in the Woodlands Crossing neighborhood near 180th and Military Road.

Feeling lucky despite the damage

South of Blair in Washington County, Kim and James Adams were watching the storm from their home on an acreage.

The wind started picking up around 4 p.m. and the storm “started sounding like a freight train,” Kim said. She and James hurried to the basem*nt with their two springer spaniel dogs. Meanwhile, their three indoor-outdoor cats found shelter in the couple’s garage.

“We were really, really close to the storm,” Kim said.

“I told my daughter that we thought the tornado was 200 to 2,000 feet from our house,” James added. “We weren’t sure how close it was. But it was very close.”

While their house was spared by the tornado, whose funnel cut a wide path but passed just north of their home, the structure had damage on every side. The tornado either uprooted, snapped or somehow destroyed thirty trees on their property, many of which were more than 60 years old. The tornado also destroyed a swing set James had been building for his five-year-old granddaughter and also bent a flag pole to the ground

Still, the couple consider themselves extremely lucky. Just north of their acreage, neighboring homes on both sides of Blair High Road were destroyed and power poles snapped, leaving wires on the ground and the Adamses without power. Omaha Public Power District was on hand to begin repair and recovery.

'I was frankly terrified'

Earlier, on the northeast edge of Lincoln, a building at the Garner Industries plant partially collapsed.

And at the Sandhills Global Event Center at 4100 N. 84th St. in Lincoln, more than 400 shoppers were forced to shelter for nearly two hours at the Spring Affair Plant Sale on Friday.

Tornadoes were spotted a quarter mile or less from the center.

“It was close. We were very lucky here,” said Michelle DeRusha of the Nebraska Statewide Arboretum, which holds the yearly sale. “There were a lot of people in the event center and just coming in for the sale.”

The sale was supposed to start at 2 p.m. and she said people were lined up outside the building. They were ushered inside when staff received storm alerts on their phones.

The shelters are located in the restrooms in the large facility. Some people also used horse stalls at the center.

DeRusha said people remained calm, and many were skeptical that a tornado would even hit in the area.

“I grew up in the New England area,” she said. “I was frankly terrified.”

People were given the all-clear to leave the shelters in the building around 3:30 p.m.

“We have a good happy ending,” DeRusha said. “Now people are happily shopping for plants.”

Chain saws roar, tarps on roofs

Elsewhere, the storm's fury was replaced by the sounds and sights of cleanup activity. Chainsaws roared in neighbors’ yards, and bulldozers lumbered to clear trees from streets.

In one Elkhorn-area neighborhood, Greg Nelson and Brandon Tubbs clambered over the damaged roof of a house at Appaloosa and Ramblewood Drives to nail down a tarp.

Across the Missouri River, residents of Council Bluffs were picking up the pieces Friday evening too after a storm roared through the area.

Gerald Kruger, who lives near 35th Street and Avenue D, recalled the strong winds that pushed a roof off of a car wash and onto two cars in the middle of Avenue A near 35th Street.

“All of a sudden, the wind picked up really fast, right between the houses and stuff,” he said.

And at the Featherstone Apartments just south of Interstate 29, residents tried to figure out where they would stay after the roofs of multiple buildings in the complex either caved in or blew off. A large pile of debris as well as several downed tree limbs sat between the apartments.

Outside Bennington, Kellie Backlund surveyed the wreckage of her family's two-story home. They had watched the approaching storm from their back deck, before huddling in a basem*nt bathroom.

“We felt safe down there, but we could hear everything going on,” she said.

The storm lasted about five minutes.

“When we came out, the whole back of the house was gone,” Backlund said.

The family was packing a few belongings, trying to figure out where to go next.

“We don’t really know the plans. It’s going to take a few minutes to sink in,” she said. “Eight years we’ve been here. It’s hard."

Backlund has been through bad storms before, but not like this one.

“When you hear the warnings, you always shelter, but you don’t think it’s actually going to happen to you,” she said. “This time it did.”

World-Herald staff writers and photographers Marjie Ducey, Luna Stephens, Dan Crisler, Mike Bell, Henry J. Cordes, Chris Machian, Nikos Frazier, Molly Ashford, Lauren Wagner, Anna Reed, Sam McKewon and Steve Liewer contributed to this report.