GREENFIELD, Iowa (WHO) — One month after the EF-4 tornado ripped though Greenfield, the town is now quiet by comparison. Many of the large demolition crews are now gone. Only a few remain to cleanup a few homes.
At the Greenfield Chamber and Development Office, they’re looking ahead.
“It’s been kind of the shortest month, and the longest month,” said Chamber Director Stacie Eschelman. “We have three staff members here and all three of us were impacted by the storm and two of us lost our homes, so we’re also dealing with the personal side and then knowing there is this huge need in our community.
Eschelman said there are over 200 properties affected, and that number continues to rise.
“On the development side some people may be thinking it’s slow, but we actually have a lot of great things in motion for our community and we’re trying to work on temporary housing,” said Eschelman. “Our foundation has done a great job of collecting donations and you’re getting ready to try to start rolling some of that out to the people in need.”
Eschelman lost her home in the tornado, but she is thankful she survived. She expects her home to be demolished next week.
The crew from Go Serv Global Ministry came to town about four weeks ago after finishing work on the tornado damage near Minden.
“It’s actually probably one of the fastest, you know, debris removals that I’ve seen,” said Go Serv’s Dennis Anderson. “You know there’s homeowners who still their insurance company hasn’t released the home and you look at the home and you know it should be down so we got a couple of those we’re waiting on.”
Go Serv Global is a non-profit, Christ-centered ministry which offers it’s services at no charge.
“We have donors that provided so we know what to buy equipment like this,” said Anderson. “We’ve got an excavator, three skid loaders, dump trailers, and trucks, a big army truck that we use to haul concrete, so all that stuff has been paid for with donations and everything we’re doing here is paid for with donations.”