Kwwl: 54-year-old man dies after Des Moines tree strike

kwwl reports a 54-year-old man died in Des Moines just before 8 a.m. Thursday after being struck by a falling tree. The man died at the scene as storms that followed Wednesday’s weather continued to cause damage across Iowa.

At least one person died in Thursday morning’s storms. MidAmerican Energy said later in the day that it had restored power to more than 17,000 customers from Wednesday’s storms, while about 65 customers were still without service as of noon Thursday and were expected back by 6 p.m. Thursday.

MidAmerican Energy crews

MidAmerican Energy said more than 300 line workers and 150 tree crew were restoring service Thursday afternoon. The utility said outages were mainly caused by downed trees, broken poles and damaged power lines.

The company was also working Thursday afternoon to restore power to around 2,600 customers in Waterloo and Charles City. MidAmerican Energy said all customers in those two cities should be restored by noon Friday.

Black Hawk County outages

Around 10 a.m. Thursday, Poweroutage.us reported 1,743 people without power in Black Hawk County, 1,075 in Keokuk County, 647 in Grundy County and 485 in Butler County. Those numbers came as crews kept moving through separate outage pockets across multiple counties.

In Des Moines, flooding was seen on Edgewood Road Thursday afternoon. Cities including Asbury and Dubuque were offering free storm debris collection, while all activities were canceled until 1 p.m. Thursday and driving ranges were closed for the rest of the day. By the end of the day, the clearest immediate issue for residents was not one single cutoff point but a mix of repair work, cleanup and delayed routines across affected communities.