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PRAIRIE DU CHIEN—Residents in this Crawford County community this week have found debris from a northeast Iowa city ravaged by a tornado Sunday more than 100 miles away.

Most of what has turned up are lightweight materials, such as photographs, personal papers and check stubs, Prairie du Chien police Chief Mike King said Wednesday.

One police sergeant Sunday picked up in his back yard greeting cards and business records from a Walgreens pharmacy in Waterloo, Iowa, 100 miles away.

“We’ve had stuff found as far south as the golf course and as far as the north city limits,” King said. “Things were found on main roads and yards.”

Police have asked city residents to collect and save what they can and bring the items to the Crawford County dispatch center, where the materials will be sent back to the proper owners when they can be identified.

The tornado that leveled half of Parkersburg, Iowa, killing seven people in the region, was the strongest to hit Iowa in 32 years, the National Weather Service said Tuesday.

Sunday’s storm — rated EF5, the top of the scale — was three-quarters of a mile wide and packed winds up to 205 mph, according to the weather service.

Brad Adams, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in La Crosse, said while it’s amazing to hear about debris traveling such a distance, “it’s not that uncommon with this kind of storm and with this kind of damage.”

Said Adams, “This occurs when you have debris carried in the clouds by very strong winds at lower levels of the atmosphere ... But we don’t normally have this kind of a storm — an EF4 or EF5.”

The nation’s last EF5 tornado flattened Greensburg, Kan., and killed 11 people May 4, 2007. Iowa’s last tornado of that size hit June 13, 1976. No one was killed in that storm.

There have been six EF5 tornadoes in Iowa, three in Wisconsin — in Menomonie, Barneveld and Oakfield — and two in Minnesota, according to the weather service.

An estimated 350 homes in and near Parkersburg were destroyed Sunday, and another 100 had major damage, Iowa Gov. Chet Culver said. About 50 people were injured.

President Bush and Culver have declared Butler County a disaster area, freeing up federal and state aid for tornado victims.

Sunday’s death toll could have been much worse, said Butler County spokeswoman Holly Fokkena.

A siren was installed about 10 days ago in southeastern Parkersburg — the area worst hit by the tornado, Fokkena said. Sirens from elsewhere in Parkersburg weren’t always audible in that part of town, she said.