Editorial: Region comes together again

Talk about it

It shouldn’t have been surprising to open Monday’s Daily Globe and read about the many ways people lent their assistance following Friday evening’s horrible storms in northwest Iowa.

Ryan Stensland, a spokesman for Alliant Energy, remarked that many folks showed up in the Little Rock and Ashton, Iowa, area to help, and provide food and drink “to help keep the crews cool and keep them going.” “We were not short of people to help,” Lyon County Sheriff Blythe Bloemendaal added.

There’s more. The American Red Cross set up operations in Little Rock and Sibley, and many of those individuals probably continued to run on little sleep upon being called to Cherokee, Iowa, for storm damage that occurred Saturday night. We also reported Monday that about 200 fire personnel had appeared in Sibley within a half hour of Friday’s tornado strike — and that didn’t include untrained volunteers. Many continued to help Saturday during cleanup despite hot and humid conditions.

“Sibley is a bedroom community, and our neighbor is our neighbor,” Sibley Fire Department Chief Ken Huls said. That’s certainly true, and it’s also quite evident the definition of neighbor was stretched to include people from across our region. This is nothing new.

We’re thankful to live in a place where neighbors continue to remember each other in such times of need.

Tags: red cross, opinion, editorials, sibley, iowa, weather, tornado