Matt Wicks, a high school junior from Parkersburg, worked to clean up a flood last fall at Lake Delhi in eastern Iowa. He moved metal and more in Mapleton.

"I'm here because they need the help," said Wicks, whose home was destroyed in 2008.

Wicks' family built a new house on the old site near the railroad tracks, a street called Watson Way. For months after the twister, the train's fury sent chills through his body.

"It's funny. You hear people say a tornado sounds like a freight train," he said. "That's exactly what it sounds like."

Whitney Voss, a high school senior, crawled through a broken window to get into her bedroom the day after the Parkersburg tornado destroyed her home. She and her parents boated that weekend in Minnesota. They missed the terror.

Or, did they? "Psychologically, I wasn't in the tornado," she said. "But not having a home was hard. We lived with my grandma for five months and then in a duplex in Aplington."

They moved into a new home around Christmas 2009, some 19 months later.

Those hardships are coming in this Monona County town. MVAO Superintendent Steve Oberg knows of 12 to 15 families of students who remain homeless. There are more.