Airman Apprentice Dakota Andrew shows off the oil painting his family gave him when they greeted him at The Eastern Iowa Airport Tuesday night, July 12, 2011. From left to right: Dakota's sister Destiny, 12, his mother, Deborah, and Rebel, his father. (Jim Malewitz/The Gazette)

A Naval Airman is home in Vinton this week to help pick up the pieces left by a devastating windstorm.

Airman Apprentice Dakota Andrew, 20, will spend the next seven days under a special Naval order to help clean up his hometown, where heavy winds sent tree trunks atop roofs and ripped power lines from their poles.

“It’s a disaster area,” said Rebel Andrew, Dakota’s father. “But it sure will be nice to have him home.”

The third-generation Airman said he first heard about the storm over the phone while at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Fla. When he saw the pictures, he immediately asked his Lt. Commander if there was a way he could head home to help, he said Tuesday at the Eastern Iowa Airport, where he received several long-lasting hugs from his parents and sister.

“What really made me decide to come home, is hearing that my whole town was damaged,” Andrew said. “Before, during the flood (of 2008), I did everything I could to help, and that’s what I want to do today.”

Andrew had last been home before he left for basic training in February.

The family’s home received just minor structural damage in the storm after a tree fell on it, Rebel Andrew said.  But out of the many decades-old trees that had been growing in the family’s yard, just one survived.

Vinton’s debris-covered roads are so difficult to travel, he said, that it takes over 30 minutes to drive the 1.5 miles from home to his job at Virginia Gay Hospitals & Clinics.

Dakota Andrew will briefly report at 5 a.m. Friday in uniform to commanders in Waterloo, but he will spend the rest of his the week working in Vinton.