Woodbury County authorities are continuing their damage assessment after severe weather struck the area Friday evening. County Emergency Services Director Gary Brown says at least three tornadoes hit rural Woodbury County. He says ene started down by Sloan and split into two, another touched down just short of Bronson and lifted and the third set down west of Climbing Hill and went northeast across the county “We’ve got 123 farms that have been affected. We have 21 farms destroyed, 42 with major damage, 43 with minor damage and 17 that are in the category of what we call ‘affected’ for a total of 123,” Brown says.

The storms missed the cities in the county — hitting only rural areas — and Brown says there was only one person injured and no residents were killed. “We’ve got several thousand acres of crop damage, we’re still trying to tally up some of the power line issues, and we’ve had essentially a low number of livestock deaths,” according to Brown.

Several power poles were snapped off by the storm, including some major feed lines. Brown says the major power lines will take several weeks to restore, and residential power should be coming back on over the next several days.

Brown says the Red Cross and Salvation Army are accepting cash donations to help the victims of the storms.

(Radio Iowa)