NEW HARTFORD - They came from all over Iowa to help.

Many knew no one in the communities hit the hardest by Sunday's tornado, but they felt the need to pitch in and do what they could to help them get through the tough days ahead.

From the comfort of his living room, Richard Tharp saw the devastation in Butler County and counted his blessings.

Then, he picked up the phone.

"I called the Butler County help line, the fire department. They said if we had a chain saw they could use our help," Tharp said during a break from cutting trees on a stranger's property in New Hartford.

Tharp and his friend Ron Olsen, both of Cedar Rapids, said they were following the direction of the fire department. On Tuesday, they helped clear Oak Hill Cemetery of fallen trees. On Wednesday, they were doing similar work near the shell of a home on 325th Street.

Next door, Ben Fisher was using a log grapple belonging to his family's business, FishSticks Millwork of Janesville, to load extra-large tree trunk pieces onto a flatbed that would be taken off to a burn pile. On Tuesday, he had used the same equipment to remove a tree from a home and multiple trees from the cemetery.

On Wednesday, about 60 students, parents and staff from Northern University High School in Cedar Falls, spent the day cleaning up the smaller pieces of debris. Though the headstones were too heavy to move - volunteer firefighter Travis Child estimated that even the small stones weighed more than 150 pounds - - the students were put to work raking the splintered wood that littered the grass walkways between the graves. But they found more than natural debris littering the cemetery.

Junior Ashleigh Jensen said the students had found everything from a doll head to a half of a floppy disk and "lots of socks."

"When we first saw it, it didn't look that bad, but the ground is covered," she said.

The students had seen this kind of devastation in the media, but for many, their trip to the tornado-ravaged town of New Hartford was the first time they had witnessed such a disaster up close.

"We all heard about what happened with Katrina on television and in the news, but we couldn't help," said junior Wrenna Walsh. "This is the first time anything like this has happened so close to home."

The school also donated the water, food and paper products that had been purchased for an end-of-the year bash to those in New Hartford who lost their home in the tornado.

The effort was organized by teacher Leasha Henriksen, whose family lives and works in New Hartford.

Judy Fisher, Ben's mother, said her three sons had donated their time and talents to the cleanup effort for three days. While they loaded up the wood - - some pieces were so large the weight lifted the trailer wheels off the ground on the opposite side - Judy Fisher walked through the fields surrounding the area, cleaning up debris that could easily be moved by hand.

"There is just so much devastation; it is going to take a long time to clean everything up," she said.

They didn't know those they were helping, but knew their work was appreciated by homeowners like Larry and Karen Lawrence, who lost everything when the tornado toppled their home.

"I don't know where we would have been without our family and these volunteers," said Larry Lawrence, as he waited for an insurance adjustor to inspect his home at 28856 325th St. "They converged on this area. We couldn't have done all this on our own."

It is hard to know where to begin when you can't even find any remnants of your home. The couple was helping their daughter move to Cedar Falls when the tornado ripped through their home leaving nothing more than a basement and chimney wall.

"Our house was yellow, and I have yet to see any speck of yellow around here," she said.

Larry said they also are relying on the generosity of businesses like Marv's Repair in Dike. The owner said the Lawrences and their neighbors could use a storage facility on his property to keep the belongings they do recover.

"You just can't thank all these people enough," he said.

Contact Emily Christensen

at (319) 291-1570 or

emily.christensen@wcfcourier.com.