The mess hall at the Little Sioux Scout Ranch was still standing Thursday, its wood and metal tables still neatly lined up. Out front, an American flag lowered to half-staff fluttered in the breeze. For at least a mile up to it and beyond, a trail of debris — mud and glass, mangled tents and shredded camp gear — littered what had been a Boy Scout camp.
At the now-broken entrance sign to the camp, kicking at the dirt, 16-year-old Charles Bowerman gingerly ran his fingertips over the gash on the side of his face that still oozed blood.
The Eagle Scout had been here Wednesday night when the tornado tore through the campground, claiming four young lives and leaving 48 others injured.
Bowerman had huddled inside the wooden-framed shelter with 50 or so other young campers — and struggled to be brave, to not to cry out when the building collapsed on top of them all.
And he returned Thursday, with hopes of finding a few precious items in the chaos. A beloved history book. A wooden staff he carved when he joined the Scouts. A Bible he had been given by a mentor.
“I thought maybe, if I could find those things, it’d help me feel like we hadn’t lost absolutely everything this week,” said Bowerman, who lives in Council Bluffs, Iowa. “I thought maybe it’d help me make sense of what happened.”
He was among the 93 Scouts and 25 staff members who had spent the last several days here, as part of a weeklong leadership camp.
Just a day before the tornado, Scout leaders had walked the youngsters through what to do in case severe weather hit the campground, located on a hilly, woodsy, 1,800-acre property an hour north of Omaha.
Leave your tent. Run to one of the few structures on the grounds — such as the meeting hall with its sturdy stone fireplace. In a rural campground with no storm cellars, no basements and no tornado shelters, it seemed the best place to find safety.
It was the kind of drill these Scouts were familiar with: Tornadoes are a routine spring event in their hometowns in Nebraska, Iowa and South Dakota.
So around 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, when some were on a hike and others were inside, the sound of a tornado siren was easy to recognize.
The hikers covered their heads with their hands. Outside, they were safe.
Others fled to the meeting hall, like they had practiced. There was no way they could have realized it would be pummeled by 100-foot trees, a crumpled red pick-up truck — and then bury them beneath a deadly mass of stone, splintered wood and chunks of cinder block.
“It ripped off the door. It ripped off the roof,” Alex Robertson, 15, of Center, Neb., said. “I saw the chimney come down right next to me. It fell on people. … Then, everyone was screaming for help.”
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Boy Scout officials on Thursday identified the dead as Aaron Eilerts, 14, of Eagle Grove, Iowa, and Ben Petrzilka, 14, Josh Fennen, 13, and Sam Thomsen, 13, all of Omaha.
“It looked like God took His hand and swatted the earth,” said Lt. Jeff Theulen, with the Omaha Police Department’s air support team. On Thursday, he flew over the campgrounds as search teams scoured the debris to make sure no one had been left behind.
“All I could think was, ‘My own son’s off at a leadership camp this week,'” Theulen said. “I had to call home, to make sure he was all right.”