(Radio Iowa) – The southwest Iowa town of Greenfield is welcoming thousands of RAGBRAI riders as the near-halfway point on today’s 82-mile leg of the bike ride between Atlantic and Winterset. Greenfield was hit by a powerful tornado in May that killed five people and wiped out dozens of homes.

Local health care worker Bailey McLaughlin is a RAGBRAI volunteer and she notes as cyclists explore Greenfield, the tornado’s path is still very evident. “It mainly hit residential areas but the hospital that I work at, Adair County Health System, did sustain some damages,” she says. “It’s mostly internal so you’ll see that they don’t look that bad on the outside, but on the inside, lots of damages.”

McLaughlin is encouraging cyclists on the week-long ride to make a donation to help the town recover. “We are getting a lot of support from RAGBRAI, especially today, but we still continue our efforts on our website which is ACHSiowa.org,” McLaughlin says. “You can go and click on our link up there and then that goes straight to tornado relief as well.”

Photo of tornado damage in Greenfield by Melissa Ehrman Johnson

On that website, you’ll find a link to the Go Fund Me page that has a $250,000 goal.

In addition to the five people killed, 35 people were injured by the twister, which the National Weather Service classified as an EF-4 with top winds of 185-miles an hour.