Mississippians help out in Iowa cleaning up storm damage

Crews from Eight Days of Hope traveled to Cedar Rapids, Iowa to help clean up damage from the storms on August 10th.

Eight days of hope sent teams to iowa to help residents clean up from storm damage.

The storm packed winds over 100 miles per hour when it cross the state.

Wtva's chelsea brown is live at the pontotoc county headquarters with more on the work the group is doing and what all damage they are seeing.

A powerful line of severe thunderstorms known as a derecho tracked through iowa monday the 10th.

Volunteers from eight days of hope traveled to cedar rapids iowa for help out any way they can.

I spoke with the ceo and founder and he tells me how long the crew will be in iowa ."

Steve tybor- ceo and founder "every single home, about 90% of the homes have some sort of damage."

Steve tybor the ceo and founder of eight days of hope tells me volunteers started working on the 15th to remove tree debris.

The storm's winds peaked between 110 -130 mph, equal to the strength of a category two hurricane.

Many trees and powerlines fell leaving much of the area without power.

"our laundry trailer is leaving tupelo today, because a lot of cedar rapids doesn't have power we can at least give them the decency to be able to wash their clothes."

The big equipment is already in iowa and crews are working to clean up debirs.

Crews with eight days of hope will be in cedar rapids until at least september 5th.

"the list of people needing help is a list that we have never seen before, we are going to do all we can many crops around the midwest were damaged in the storms. tybor says the crop damage will affect the entire country.

"the amount of crops that were damaged in the midwest is going to affect all of us probably in about 4-8 weeks" tybor says the tree damage in iowa was unlike many other storms. "we have never seen tree damage like this outside of the coast."

Power crews in cedar rapids are constantly working to restore power.

Tybor says it could be another few weeks before all the power is restored.

"60-70% of the power has been restored, in downtown cedar rapids that's a challenge."

Eight days of hope is planning on opening a branch in cedar rapids.

Live in pontotoc, chelsea brown, wtva 9 news from thousands of submissions to