APLINGTON - "It's coming!"

It was 4 a.m. Collin Johnson's warning cut through the night, shooting out of nowhere.

His sister, Chelsea, jumped to offer reassurance.

"We'll be OK," she said.

The intensity grew.

"We gotta get down! We gotta get down now!" brother, Cody, ordered them to the basement.

Nobody moved. After all, no real danger was approaching.

But the haunting dreams - like a time capsule - were clear. All three children had been launched back to May 25, and a tornado was about to rip through their Parkersburg home.

Their grandmother, getting ready for the day, overheard them crying out to each other, conversing aloud, reliving the disaster a week after it happened.

But their eyes were closed.

They were sleeping - safe on their grandparents' living room floor in neighboring Aplington.

A familiar story

Odd as it may seem, this is a common reaction to an uncommon incident, said Peter Cote, a licensed independent social worker and assistant coordinator for Project Recovery Iowa.

The crisis counseling program is sponsored by a grant from FEMA under the auspices of the Iowa Department of Human Services. In Northeast Iowa, it is coordinated by Pathways Behavioral Services of Waterloo, which is providing crisis mental health services for seven counties - Black Hawk, Buchanan, Butler, Bremer, Chickasaw, Floyd and Cerro Gordo.

The program sends outreach workers door to door in disaster-stricken areas to speak with children and adults.

"Outreach workers are a listening ear, emotional support," Cote said. "They're not diagnosing. They're not counseling."

"Our outreach worker knocks on the door, hands them the information and says, 'Would you like to talk?' And then we're gone, and we're onto the next person," Cote said.

The vast majority of children and adults - 85 percent says Chris Hoffman, executive director at Pathways - will tell their story and decline any help.

Others may be referred for formal counseling sessions. About 5 percent of storm survivors may need serious mental health assistance for problems like post-traumatic stress.

"My mission is that I don't want to hear from people in January who haven't left their house in six months," because they are still traumatized by a disaster, Hoffman says.

Suffering a loss

But even children coping well after a disaster are affected by it.

Eight-year-old Collin remembers the Parkersburg tornado and its aftermath vividly.

As the terror subsided, the sound of dressers rolling around upstairs stopped.

Winds died down. Debris quit hitting the house.

Huddled together underneath a blanket in the basement, parents Brent "Bruno" and Jenny Johnson waited. Charity, 4, and Collin clung tightly to Mom. Ten-year-old Cody was quiet. Chelsea, 11, prayed.

Wait here, Brent said. Just in case the twister looped back to finish what it started.

Brent ventured out first, climbing up the stairs to survey the scene.

"It was different," Chelsea said. "Hearing Dad say, 'Oh, my gosh, Jenny. Get up here and look at this.' I just couldn't imagine what it looked like."

Besides shattered windows and bits of glass imbedded in furniture, their house at 1016 Dorothy Ave. appeared intact. And the kids' bedrooms - still messy.

Outside, one of their vans lay on its side in a neighbor's yard, pierced by a tree. The garage door was caved in, but the pet rabbits, Chocolate and Butterscotch, survived. Only two-by-fours had landed on top of their cage in the back of the garage.

Cody was angry. He flipped the mattress off his bed and threw a few things across the room.

"I thought, 'Holy crap, it's a mess,' " Cody said.

Unaware his mom was standing in the doorway, swear words slipped from his mouth.

"I peeked around the corner, and his eyes got really big like, 'Uh, oh,' " Jenny said. "And I'm like, 'It's all right. I'm thinking the same thing. Just don't say them anymore.' "

He darted into the hallway. Shaking. Crying.

Jenny scooped him into her arms.

That night, all six packed up clothes and valuables and hiked the half mile across a field behind their house to catch a ride to Aplington with Brent's brother, Jason, and his wife, Mavis.

They'd stay with Brent's parents for a while.

It would be like a vacation, Brent told an inquisitive Charity.

Cleaning up

The house could possibly be repaired, the Johnsons' insurance company said.

But after a day or two, Brent and Jenny knew otherwise. The house was weakening, and a basement wall was ready to cave in. Engineers deemed the house unsafe. Get your stuff out, they told the Johnsons.

"It kind of hit all of us," Brent paused. "We were at the house, the kids could see the house was still standing, but I don't think any of them understood why we couldn't stay there."

In the coming days, church friends recruited people off the street to help the Johnsons sort through their possessions.

Brent's brother, Chadd, and wife, Jen, brought along some of Chadd's co-workers from Best Buy in Waterloo. They boarded up windows and whatever needed to be done.

Pay us in hugs, they told the Johnsons.

As they were cleaning up, Brent and Jenny gave the kids hammers and let them pound nails into their trashed swing set.

"They took out their aggression that way," Jenny said.

The house was later flattened. Jenny stopped by with Cody as an excavator was tearing down the basement walls. Cody snapped some pictures with her cell phone.

"I said, 'Well, what do you think about that?' " Jenny said. "Cody didn't say anything. He just put my phone in my purse and just looked out the window and wouldn't talk to me."

After a week living with her grandparents, Charity was ready to go home.

She was tired of vacation.

Behavior changes

Cody stopped giving his parents hugs goodnight years ago. By age 6 or 7, he was too old for that.

Since the tornado, he never misses a night.

"High winds and that scare me," Cody said. "Well, I wasn't scared before of it, but now I am."

Collin gets upset when the wind blows. A vibrating washing machine or dishwasher make him nervous.

"It's loud," Collin said. "It sounds like something's going down the garbage disposal. It sounds like a tornado."

He screams, flips all the lights on and runs to find his family.

Similarly, some children think a train chugging through Parkersburg mimics a tornado, and they hide under furniture or have panic attacks, said the Rev. Ryan Zurbriggen of Calvary Baptist Church in Parkersburg. He also lost his home in the storm.

During a vacation Bible school at the church, one child got upset when a song involved banging on the pews. Leaders cut out the sound effects.

Charity won't leave a room by herself. She sometimes talks and screams as she sleeps.

Chelsea doesn't say much. She just wishes tornadoes didn't exist.

In the living room of their grandparents' house, the kids sleep on an air mattress, recliner or couch. With four to six night lights, it looks like noon at night. Each child keeps a flashlight within reach.

Jenny and Brent shut off some of the lights once the four fall asleep.

At their old house, a single night light glowing in the bathroom sufficed.

"Charity used to have a night light, but she was getting to the point where she didn't want a night light on," Jenny said. "She was a big girl - didn't need a night light.

"Now, we're back to the night light."

Such regressed behaviors - like heightened fears or irritability or losing some maturity - are common and natural, said Cote, the social worker.

More dramatic regressions, like bed-wetting, can be symptoms of more severe problems, like traumatic stress.

Trying to keep routine

Suppertime at the Johnson residence is a lot more lively since Roger and JoAnn Johnson took on six housemates.

But that hasn't stopped everyone from squeezing into the kitchen to eat together.

As a family.

Prayer first. Heads bowed and hands folded, the eight chant the words in unison.

Six are pulled up to the dining table. One hovers above a portable table. And another eats with a plate in lap next to the countertop.

It has become the norm. It establishes some consistency. Unlike some broken routines.

Those just can't be helped.

The kids had to cancel swimming lessons this summer. The pool was within walking distance of their Parkersburg home. Now they are four miles away in Aplington, too far to transport themselves while their parents work.

There's no more walking a block to the grocery store. And no more rolling wagonloads of cans to Kwik Star to collect coins for St. Jude's Hospital.

But the kids are coping, wearing out the tires on their bicycles as they speed up and down the block in front of their grandparents' house. Or driving lawn mowers to test their horsepower.

"I guess we're trying to make do with what we got," Brent said.

Cody's bike was damaged, so he hops on his dad's.

Cody also played a shortened Little League season, including in an all-star game at Lynnville. TV reporters interviewed Cody there, and it was the most he'd talked about goings-on back home since the tornado, his parents said.

"Jenny and I pretty much had to watch the video clips off the Internet to hear him talk about it, to see what he said," Brent said.

Sometimes it helps for children to talk to someone who is not family member, noted Cote, the social worker.

However, if kids do swap storm stories, be what they say is accurate, said Hoffman, of Pathways.

"I heard a story awhile ago about some kids were convinced that the tornadoes came more than once because they saw it on TV more than once," Hoffman said. "Kids will talk it out, but if all they're doing is getting phony information or one kid's trying to scare them, it's not going to be effective."

Rebuilding lives

Last weekend Cody and Collin climbed into a semi truck with their uncle, bound for Sac City.

They think that is a big deal.

The girls stayed behind to attend Relay for Life in Allison, a fundraiser for the American Cancer Society. They'd already bought pink hair ribbons and fingernail polish for the event.

During Bible school at Calvary church, Zurbriggen said his wife, Renessa, thought it was so nice to see children laughing, playing and having a good time - without worrying about things.

"She brought up that old adage - laughter is the best medicine - and it's been true in a lot of ways," Zurbriggen said.

Church members put together tornado kits with weather radios, childrens' Bibles and toys to deliver to families with struggling kids.

Jenny's seen her kids pitching in more with household chores, like folding laundry.

Before, it was like pulling teeth.

Whoever doesn't help has to fold the socks.

Rebuilding a home

Brent and Jenny are trying to keep the kids informed about plans for the new 1,770-square-foot house. They're also buying an adjacent lot. Their neighbors decided not to rebuild.

"There shouldn't be any trees that they'll run into, playing catch or whatever," Brent said.

Each child will get a room of their own, with Cody and Chelsea in the basement.

Before, the girls shared, and so did the boys.

"I bet they won't even be in their own rooms," Jenny predicted. "It'll be interesting who sneaks into whose room for comfort."

And the new house will have a piece of their old home when they move in.

Sister-in-law Mavis transplanted hostas, a rose bush and lilies of the valley to her yard in Aplington. Easter buckets, ice cream pails and even a Lincoln Log container found among the rubble doubled as flower pots.

A week and a half ago, Jenny's favorite rose bush had started to bloom.

Mavis will nurture the plants until the new house sprouts up, possibly by October.

Like a house-warming gift.

That's something to start with.

Contact Tina Hinz at (319) 291-1484 or tina.hinz@wcfcourier.com.