House Representative from District 23 Ray Sorensen is a resident of Greenfield, and after the devastating damage from the May 21st tornado, is doing what he can to help the community.

Sorensen mentions to Raccoon Valley Radio that he actually happened to be out of Greenfield when the tornado struck, and came in afterwards to find the damage.

“So I was actually painting some clouds behind Jesus in a church in Fontanelle, and I looked outside as the storm was hitting and I thought to myself, ‘This doesn’t look too bad, just your run of your mill thunderstorm.’ And I started getting calls from my wife, and family, and friends I haven’t heard from in a while saying, ‘How are you? Are you okay? Is everything okay?’ And so I packed up the paint and hit the road and kind of chased the tornado out of Greenfield. As it was leaving I was pulling in, and I just whipped it into the bank parking lot there on (Highway) 92.”

Sorensen adds that he realized that a friend lived in the zone impacted by the storm, and started heading to their home to see if they were alright, but along the way found someone in need of assistance.

“Ended up running into a guy that had, literally a hole in his head, and was bleeding, and was in a bad way with his ribs and his lungs and everything. And so I snagged a plastic table out of a shed, and we used that as a stretcher. We loaded him into the back of a Chevy truck that was driven by a guy that was from out of state, and we asked if we could just throw him up on top of his toolbox there. And so we kind of made a makeshift ambulance and took him to what became Grand Central Station at the time, the lumberyard. And that’s where we found some ambulances to get him further help, and some EMT’s (Emergency Medical Technicians).”

Sorensen explains that while he doesn’t know how to run some of the equipment being used to help with clean up, he has been helping in other ways. He says that thanks to his time in the State House, he has made several connections with individuals that know what to do in other areas of the recovery process. Sorensen mentions that he has been doing what he can, and when someone needs help that he can’t provide, he gets in touch with someone who can. This includes the Iowa Department of Natural Resources Commissioner, as debris dump sites must be sanctioned by the DNR before anything can be moved there.