An early morning satellite image shows the nearly mile long path of damage left by the May 21st tornado in Greenfield, Iowa. Image collected at 9:27 a.m. on May 22nd. Image courtesy of BlackSky Technology

With the devastation that befell Greenfield with the May 21st tornado, many had a realization of what mother nature can do.

Iowa Senator for District 12 Amy Sinclair says that she was actually in Des Moines at the time of the tornado. She tells Raccoon Valley Radio that once she heard what had happened, all she could do was turn on the news and see the videos and pictures that came in, and realize just how terrible the damage was.

“You know that these things can happen. We live in Iowa, we understand that springtime weather can crop up and just really wreak havoc. But you never fully think that something of this magnitude is actually going to happen. You know, we’re so rural that so many tornadoes skirt our towns and really don’t leave the devastation that we saw.”

Sinclair mentions that thinking back on her time as an elected official, there are two other events that come to mind as being chaotic for their respective areas. She says one was the ice storm in 2010 that rolled through the state when she was a Wayne County Supervisor, and in 2017 when a tornado hit Seymour while she was a Senator for the state. Sinclair explains that while both events were destructive in their own rights, neither were close to the scale of destruction she’s seen in Greenfield.