Print edition: 
Emergency workers arriving in Greensburg the night a massive tornado struck the Kiowa County town weren't prepared for what they found.
Virtually every building in the town had been destroyed or damaged.
Cell phones didn't work. Electricity was out. Houses, buildings, street signs were gone.
"To roll in there and have the only light in the town be the headlights of the vehicle that you drove in... it was like driving on the moon," Sedgwick County Emergency Management director Randy Duncan said.
"The complete absence of any kind of infrastructure in a Kansas town is something we've never seen before."
Emergency service providers couldn't talk to each other because the 911 system was down.
As crews converged from different jurisdictions, they discovered they couldn't talk to each other because they didn't have radios that used the same frequencies.
"If they show up with different radios, then it's no better than if they didn't have a radio at all," said Sharon Watson, director of public affairs for the Kansas Division of Emergency Management.
The few cell phone towers operating in the region quickly became overwhelmed by demand.
"Just as they found out at 9/11, when everyone starts using their cell phone it quickly jams up the system," Watson said.
The Kansas Department of Transportation sent its "communications on wheels" vehicle to restore 911 service, and the state adjutant general's departmentdeployed a team to set up an "incident command system."
The system is designed for emergency management officials who normally don't work together to team up in response to a disaster.
One member in Greensburg, for instance, focused on what was needed over the next several hours. Another addressed logistics: What do we need in terms of equipment and people, and how do we get them here?
Each member was assigned one piece of an overall picture. Even though training in the new concept had just begun when Greensburg was demolished, Watson said, the system proved itself.
"It... provides a great structure for operations, especially when the people participating don't know one another," she said.
Regional incident response teams have been created so they can respond quickly to a disaster, and training began last week in Haysville.
The disaster recovery center that provided "one-stop shopping" for such basic documents as driver's licenses and birth certificates for residents affected by the tornado also worked well, Watson said -- so well it will be set up when future disasters strike.
Other problems that became evident in Greensburg still have no solutions. State officials have obtained federal funding to study how to create a statewide communications system to solve the problem of responders from different jurisdictions using different radio frequencies, Watson said.
Portable support systems for computers and other technology are another issue, Duncan said.
"It's amazing how dependent we've become on that technological infrastructure to do basic stuff," he said. "It's an element of our overall productivity.
"The way society is changing, we have created new vulnerabilities to disasters simply by the way we live," he said.
The Greensburg tornado illuminated other gaps, Watson said, and state officials are working to fill them. Among them:
• The creation of a state animal response team, where volunteers converge on the stricken community to collect pets, care for any injuries and reunite them with their owners.
• Urban search and rescue teams to search through collapsed buildings for victims. While Wichita officials are ahead of other regions, Watson said, more training and funding is needed.
• Additional staff for disaster response efforts. The state division of emergency management has asked the state Legislature for more funding, Watson said, though a decision has not yet been made.
• Creating storm-proof storage sites for community records. The Greensburg hospital's records were "protected" when debris fell on top of them and shielded them from winds that could have scattered them for miles, Watson said.
