As a tornado ravaged its way through Iowa City on April 13, 2006, destroying their historic home, the girls in the house huddled together in terror in the basement.
And in the weeks and months that followed, they continued to stick together, dealing with two moves to temporary locations, the stress of the end of the semester and developing plans for a new AXO house at 828 E. Washington St. "The actual tornado was much louder than 48 girls screaming and crying," said current chapter president Liz Silagi, 21, a junior majoring in pre-law.
"You could feel it. You could hear it. But you didn't really think anything bad happened," said Tiffany Beuter, 20, a junior majoring in elementary education. "I didn't really think it was as bad as it was until I saw the house afterward."
"I didn't realize I had the nail in my foot," she said, but she knew she needed to walk, hop or somehow get downtown to a hospital. After only about a block, however, the chapter adviser found Beuter and transported her to the hospital in her minivan.
"School that next week was really awkward and weird just because you had so much on your mind and having other people that were going through that same thing, like having difficulties staying focused, was something that was really big for me," Beuter said.
The next day, the girls returned to the house and packed up whatever belongings they could find, even stripping the couch cushions of their covers as a way to carry their things around. Many items throughout the house were destroyed by rain, insulation and broken glass.
"From walking in and out of the house the whole day, I had glass stuck in my feet, and it took forever to get it out," said Katie Serbus, a sophomore majoring in chemistry with a pre-med emphasis. "It hurt so bad, but to get the stuff out of the house, it was worth it."
Serbus said she wasn't in the house at the time of the tornado because she and her roommate were heading back from shopping. As the storm worsened, the two stopped at a hotel.
"It was actually harder to be (in the hotel) without everybody else," she said, especially after she called and a friend told her, "We've been hit, we've been hit."
For the rest of the spring 2006 semester, the girls lived in the former Phi Gamma Delta fraternity house. This year and next, they are staying in the former Phi Delta Theta fraternity house.
"(The house) was a much more sentimental thing than I ever would have imagined, than I even gave it credit for before everything happened" she said.
That's because for the members of AXO, it wasn't just a house. It was where they went to weekly meetings, where they were drawn to during the recruitment process, where they created meaningful college memories and friendships.
The new house will be "very similar in look from the exterior," said sorority adviser and national vice president Marsha King Grady. "It's not exactly like the old house, but it has a lot of the same kind of feel."
Part of the challenge is building a new home in one of Iowa City's historic districts. To meet current codes, it will have more parking, with 35 spaces, and four fewer residents at 44 members. At 16,000 square feet, it will be slightly larger than the old house, she said.
Grady said the rebuilding committee is about three weeks behind where it hoped to be, with the Iowa City Planning and Zoning Commission addressing its rezoning request earlier this month.
Sorority members will continue to live at the Phi Delta Theta fraternity house, adorned with the Alpha Chi Omega letters, until the new house is complete, Grady said. The plan is to move into the new house for the fall 2008 semester.
Jessica Fischels' shocked expression, standing in what was left of her bedroom at 929 Iowa Ave. Apartment No. 24, was seen nationwide. A photograph of her taken by the Iowa City Press-Citizen appeared in The New York Times and on CNN.
"It was just by random chance that I lived there," said Fischels, now 22 and graduating in May from the University of Iowa with a degree in psychology. She has just returned from a semester abroad in Australia and needed a place to live.
The night of April 13, 2006, Fischels, originally from Jesup, was at her apartment with her older sister, Tarra. "The weather was really weird," she said.
When they came outside, "I remember seeing the building next door, and it was completely swept away," Fischels said. "And then I looked up at mine and it wasn't there either."
"Basically, in our apartment, we had two walls left," she said. "Parts of my bed frame were still there and a basket with dirty laundry was still there."
Other clothes were littered in front of the building, hanging in trees and soaking in mud puddles. Her dresser came down from the building and was standing up vertical on the front lawn, she said.
Luckily, her dad's insurance paid for 80 percent of the cost for everything she lost and the total cost for her lost laptop. It ended up being close to $3,000, she said.
Harvey Miller said he has joked with friends and family about the night of the tornado, when he and his wife, Maxine, went to the basement for safety as the storm passed through the area.
Harvey Miller moved to 805 Iowa Ave. in 1975. His wife and children followed in 1976. They bought the subsequent houses one at a time, the couple said.
The couple went out to the porch and looked down the street. They made it down to their rental property, but no farther. They didn't realize the extent of the damage to the 900 block of Iowa Avenue and to the Alpha Chi Omega house until four days later.
The couple lost eight huge old pine trees that surrounded the back of the house. Now, they have a clear view to the apartment building behind their house.
Two garages behind the homes also are gone. The tornado took the roof off one of the garages and almost everything in it -- "everything but the little John Deere tractor," he said.
Along with the loss of trees behind their home and in the Iowa Avenue median, the tornado caused other changes to the Iowa Avenue neighborhood, the couple said.
Thirty-two rental homes owned by The Housing Fellowship, a local non-profit corporation that works to provide affordable housing to families with low and moderate incomes, were damaged by the tornado.
The United Way helped that family and The Housing Fellowship financially, Dennis said. The fellowship also received a short-term, zero percent loan from the Housing Trust Fund of Johnson County that will allow them to upgrade the home, she said.
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