Four people from same family killed in Iowa tornadoes

Victims were sheltering in rural home without basement when storm struck

Four members of the same family were killed in the devastating tornado that tore through Iowa.

Officials say that the family was huddled together in the pantry of a home that did not have a basement, and which was destroyed in the storm on Saturday.

Two children, their father and their grandmother all died at the home near rural Winterset, but the children’s mother, 8-year-old brother, grandfather and uncle survived.

The children and their parents, who are from Missouri, were visiting their grandmother, Melissa Bazley, 63, when the tornado hit.

It killed Bazley, 37-year-old Michael Bolger and two of his three young children, 5-year-old Kinlee Bolger and 2-year-old Owen Bolger.

Kuri Bolger, the children’s mother and Bazely’s daughter, was hospitalised with serious injuries,

A GoFundMe page made for the family has raised more than $300,000.

Two other people, Rodney Clark, 64, and Cecilia Lloyd, 72, lived in homes in the same area that were also hit by the tornado.

Officials say that the tornado had top wind speeds of 170mph and was on the ground for nearly 70 miles.

The seventh person, Jesse Fisher, 40, was killed when the storm hit Lucas County, Iowa.

The state Department of Natural Resources said that Fisher was in an RV at a campground at Red Haw State Park near Chariton when the storm hit.

It was the deadliest storm to his the state since 2008, when a tornado killed nine people and destroyed 300 homes in the northern Iowa city of Parkersburg.