An Emotional Trip Down Derecho Memory Lane

 

Aug. 10, 2020—a day that will loom large in the memory of Cedar Rapidians.

This week, on Wednesday, I zoomed into a session sponsored by The Gazette, our daily paper. Their four-person photojournalism staff shared many images that they made and discussed memories of the devastating storm.

A tornado can be bad. A big, powerful one may stay on the ground for a hundred miles, leaving a sometimes mile-wide swath of destruction. But such monster twisters are rare even here in Iowa where we are used to tornado safety drills and listen for those warning sirens when the summer skies darken.

But the derecho was a whole level of crazy beyond that. We were expecting a storm Aug. 10, but nobody expected an unusual bow of destruction, a bent wall of straight-line winds that would sweep across much of the state, flattening crops, ripping off roofs and uprooting trees as it blew and blew.

Aug. 10, after the storm, C Avenue traffic slows to a crawl as street is blocked by power lines. (Not a Gazette image, see theirs on their video above, all images in this post are mine).

Hurricane-force winds devastated wide areas of the state. Cedar Rapids, its immediately connected communities such as Marion, Hiawatha and Robins, and the small towns in the county surrounding us were hit with a storm that started as a thunderstorm but quickly escalated and seemed like it would never stop. “Derecho” means both “right” and “straight on” in Spanish, and the Spanish word labels a straight-on storm whose violence is hard to image if you have not lived through one.

And in many ways the derecho hasn’t ended. Many homes were damaged—apartments and houses—and the impact of derecho devastation still reverberates in town. One result is that this city, which just last summer featured a beautiful canopy of mature trees, will take a generation to recover its shade. Me and my family were lucky—even though our houses were damaged, and we just signed a contract this week for one derecho-recovery project with more to come.

Last August! I remember the sense of survival instinct in those dark powerless days following the storm. Much food was spoiled, gasoline was not to be had in town, and we had to get creative. But we were among the fortunate one—our problems were manageable and our house inhabitable even if not fully intact.

In Cedar Rapids, we are blessed to have a local newspaper owned by a local company. In many places, photojournalists are an endangered species. We have four talented photographers who freeze historic moments in time, and The Gazette published a book based on their images.

At the session, moderator Mary Sharp noted that Gazette photographers made more than 10,000 images of the storm and its aftermath, and used 1,000 by printing them or sharing them online.

Then, 195 of them were used to publish a book about that storm. The Gazette is donating a part of the proceeds to replanting trees.

Aug. 11, campus of Mount Mercy University. There was a much beloved grove of huge pines that were in the lawn by Warde Hall. Past tense, they are gone with the wind now. Here, one lies on the building the day after the storm. The campus suffered millions of dollars in damage.

Each photographer took turns describing the story behind the images shown Wednesday. Andy Abeyta shot both the image that become the book cover—it was chosen partly because the image had room for the cover text—and the more famous front-page image of passersby aiding a truck driver caught in an overturned truck.

As Abeyta described it, he was in Iowa City that day to make images of a protest there. He was returning to Cedar Rapids when the once in a century (knock on wood) storm blew through. He saw a truck that had just overturned, parked and ran back to see if he could help—but three other people were already there to aid the driver, so Abeyta took out his cell phone and shot some images.

It is an interesting note that a media photographer with fine digital SLR cameras ended up capturing this key moment with his phone. But I think angle, timing and an eye that can quickly see the possible images—I always tell my students that journalism requires imagination, and I do not mean making stuff up but rather recognizing possibilities in gathering information or making images—are a photojournalist’s most important tools.

It’s not the camera, it’s the photographer. Nothing substitutes for recognizing you’re in the right place at a key moment and using whatever tool you have.

All of the photographers—Liz Martin, the Gazette’s head photographer; Jim Slosiarek, who has recorded the first draft of Cedar Rapids history for many years; Rebecca Miller; and Abeyta told interesting stories of many images.

One lesson driven home again and again is the importance of journalists to get out and about—to report by being there. Again, it’s a key point I try to make with my students, with mixed results. Don’t email all your sources or consult Google to retread information—the best journalism is what you find in the world, and you have to be out there to encounter it. That’s always true of photographers, but is a lesson for the rest of the tribe, too.

And, as Martin noted, news photographers are always looking for “the human impact.” Another journalism 101—don’t just show “the thing.” Show what the thing means to people—and that is very true of photography. I often make images of nature—because I’m a journalism professor, not a journalist—but I have a pretty good reputation as an event image maker at MMU, and I always think what I try to do is capture what something means by capturing the emotions of the people.

Things can be important too, and Martin made the point while showing an image without a person in it, so not every news pictures requires a person in it—but people are usually key.

Later in August, power is finally back on. Butterflies, birds, deer--wildlife had been scarce since the storm, but critters are starting to reappear. Here, an angry squirrel on the felled giant ash tree in front of my house seems to hold me accountable for the disruptions to its life.

One question posed was whether the news photographers were invading people’s privacy at vulnerable moments. They all described asking for consent—and for tying to make images in a respectful way that does not interfere with the moment.

And that gets to anther point. People who suffer through an experience like the derecho can be vulnerable—but what they least want is to be ignored. Journalists—photojournalists like this panel of four but also writers, videographers, radio reporters, TV reporters, web site journalists—are there to prevent that, to tell the stories that otherwise might be ignored.

It was a bit emotional watching the images float by. Photography has power because it does freeze an instant in time, and the best images capture the emotion of that instant. And those of us who lived through the derecho can’t help but recall the intense feelings of that time as we watched the slide show on Martin’s shared desktop.

It was an interesting night. I’m glad that the Gazette gave us this opportunity to learn more about the stories behind the news images.