CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (Iowa’s News Now) — From the outside, much of Cedar Rapids looks recovered from the derecho that hit five years ago. What you can’t see is the anxiety, the nightmares, the triggers that still live on in many.
For Barb Hartgrave, the owner of County Line BBQ & Catering, it’s a day seared into her memory. She was inside her food truck, the BBQ Barn, when the storm hit:
“We had served a few people and we could just see the clouds just coming in and it was just pitch black Chris said, let’s get underneath the table. So there was a table behind us so we got underneath the table and it wasn’t two minutes later, the whole thing just tipped over backwards on us. Literally said the lord’s prayer, I can’t even count how many times, but for 45 minutes we sat there and you just don’t get over this, you don’t get over something like this, but we sat there and prayed and just kept looking above us. I’m going to miss my family. There was a power line above us. We just felt like it was getting closer and it was just a big power line and it just felt like it was coming in on us and we had no idea what was gonna happen.”…