Wichita Eagle: Greensburg Tornado

Greensburg blog: From our reporters' notes

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 14:31 CST

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Greensburg is gone; its future, unknown

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 17:15 CST

This sun-baked High Plains town no longer has a grade school, a high school, a City Hall, a hospital, a water tower, a fire station, a business district or a main street.

It has people, but all 1,400 of them live elsewhere today. The homes they kept, the rooms where they were born, where they grew old together, now lie in millions of pieces, some of them as small as matchsticks. Tatters and shards of Greensburg flew for miles across the shortgrass and sage and yucca outside town on Friday night. Their branches now hold the shreds of housing insulation, pieces of tin, pieces of twisted roofing, crumpled family photographs, torn documents, and bits and pieces of belongings.

The Kiowa County courthouse still stands. The grain elevator still stands. The water tower, as a highway patrol trooper said, "is not just down -- it is completely destroyed."

Stunned survivors wonder how they'll cope

DAN CLOSE — Wed, 18 May 2011 11:01 CDT

U.S. 54 -- dubbed "the yellow brick road" as it runs through town -- was not paved with gold after the killer tornado devastated Greensburg.

The twister left the roadside littered with cracked red bricks from businesses, crushed and overturned trucks, and shards of sheet metal banging in the breeze.

Everywhere was misery. Before dawn Saturday morning, survivors huddled together, lost and staring, standing in disbelief -- too stunned to comprehend how their lives had been forever altered.

What's needed and how to help

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 17:15 CST

At the shelter at Barclay College in Haviland, 12 miles east of Greensburg, Red Cross workers Saraphena Tannahill of Derby and Donna Ward of Coldwater said they desperately need phone service or some way to communicate with other shelters.

What's happening is, as people come in looking for their family members that are missing, the shelters don't have a way to talk to one another to see if someone has shown up since their registration list was prepared.

All the land line phone service is down, and cell connections are poor in Haviland. It appears that several people are still unaccounted for, just by the volume of people coming into shelters looking for people.

Rebuild of Greensburg theater breaks ground

SOLI SALGADO — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 08:28 CDT

It began in 1917 as the Auditorium, the only theater between Kansas City and Denver. The 1920s transformed it into the Twilight Theatre, a public meeting place and entertainment center in Greensburg for the next 80 years, until the tornado took it with the rest of the town in 2007.

Now it is beginning a new chapter in its history as the Greensburg Twilight Theatre & Community Auditorium.

City officials and community and business leaders will break ground today on the $2.7 million project, which will be built on the corner of South Main and Florida.

On tornado anniversary, Greensburg reflects

BECCY TANNER — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 08:28 CDT

Scott Reinecke puts a positive spin on the life he has now.

He and his wife, Susan, married for 23 years, are closer than they've ever been.

Both enjoy their dream jobs in their dream business, Studio 54 Stained Glass.

A greener Greensburg grows on Kansas prairie

FRED MANN — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 08:20 CDT

The mayor of Greensburg guides the city-leased hybrid Ford Escape around a corner and pulls to a stop. "Wow, I hadn't seen this," he says. "Another new home going in." Two years after an EF-5 tornado killed 11 people and swept away 90 percent of the town, so much has changed in Greensburg that even the mayor has to stay alert to keep up with it.

"If you don't drive around but about twice a week, you miss what's going on," Bob Dixson says.

Over there, for example, just south of the Kwik Shop on U.S. 54, is an arts center, a glass and wood rectangle that looks like a work of art.

Survivor deals with post-tornado trauma with journal

STAN FINGER — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 11:08 CDT

Editor's note: Megan Gardiner and her family survived a direct hit from the Greensburg tornado. She chronicled that experience in a journal to help deal with the trauma from the event.

"The sirens were going off for about 10 minutes and I was thinking, 'Well, they just spotted one out in the country and it's a false alarm and these sirens should go off any minute.' But they didn't. I was kind of starting to get a little worried... "

Megan Gardiner didn't give it a second thought when she heard a tornado watch had been issued for her hometown on that first Friday in May 2007.

Megan Gardiner's account of surviving the Greensburg tornado

Tue, 19 Jun 2012 11:08 CDT

Editor's note: Megan Gardiner, a freshman at Pratt Community College, wrote this account of surviving the May 4, 2007 Greensburg tornado. It was so detailed that it caught the attention of a pair of meteorologists researching the outbreak. They cited her account in their research paper.

My Tornado Story
By Megan Gardiner

May 4, 2007 was a night that changed not only my life but 1,500 other lives too. I just thought of it as a normal day of the week, Friday to be exact. The tornado was rated and EF-5, which is the largest and most devastating tornado, and I was a part of it.

Friday morning I woke up and as usual, I was dreading going to school. On the other hand, I was excited it was Friday as that meant I could hang out with my friends later. I went to school and the track kids left around 12:45 or so and the golf kids left at 1:00 p.m. State Forensics was that day and weekend and they left sometime during the day also. The thing that I remember the most that day was getting new desks in my Math/Chemistry classroom. My friend, and I put most of them together and that took all hour. Then, like always, the day just went on as normal. No one expected anything to come later that night.

From our reporters' notes: a Greensburg blog

Wed, 18 May 2011 11:04 CDT

3 p.m. Sunday

In a strange juxtaposition, a full set of white and blue china -- including tea service -- stands on display in a storefront on Haviland's main street, perfect, while Greensburg residents' dishes are strewn across their town.

People stop to hug in front of the hardware store, relieved to see one another.

Help still needed after '07 Greensburg tornado

CHANDRA STAUFFER — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 13:09 CST

The city of Greensburg still needs volunteers and money as it continues to build and recover from the May 4, 2007, tornado that destroyed 95 percent of the town.

Just this week, walls went up at the new city hall, and the Streetscape project -- a four-block stretch of main street that is getting new landscaping, water lines and decorative sidewalks -- is under way.

"There is lots going on every day," said Kim Alderfer, assistant city administrator.

Greensburg hospital done

KAREN SHIDELER — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 06:32 CST

Greensburg's $25 million hospital is opening its doors to the public today, not quite three years after a tornado leveled the old Kiowa County Memorial Hospital and much of the rest of the town.

The new hospital, designed by Wichita's Health Facilities Group, is built to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design — LEED — Platinum standards.

The certification process isn't complete. If certified, the hospital would be the first critical-access hospital with the LEED Platinum designation, said hospital administrator Mary Sweet. A critical-access hospital is a smaller rural hospital.

Greensburg hospital gets new features

EDIE ROSS — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 00:08 CST

GREENSBURG — In just a few weeks, one of Greensburg's most recognizable community landmarks will reopen.

The Kiowa County Memorial Hospital won't be in the same location and it will look nothing like the 1950s-era hospital that was destroyed in the May 4, 2007, tornado.

The new hospital, while smaller, will offer the services it did before the tornado, with the exception of a behavioral health department, which has moved to Kinsley.

Nine confirmed dead; Roberts vows quick federal aid

TIM POTTER, BRENT WISTROM, P.J. GRIEKSPOOR AND HURST LAVIANA — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 17:31 CST

Rescue operations in Greensburg were suspended at 8 tonight as a curfew goes into effect in the town where eight of the nine Kansans died in a Friday night tornado.

Officials said the ninth victim was a sheriff's deputy killed in Stafford County.

Sharon Watson, director of public affairs for the Kansas adjutant general's office, said dozens of people were injured.

In Greensburg, a scene of devastation

TIM POTTER — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 17:24 CST

As the faint sun rose Saturday morning, bit by bit it revealed the enormity of the tornado damage in Greensburg.

Near what had been a convenience store, on U.S. 54, a moving van lay on its side spilling out a household of possessions -- a dining room set and golf clubs lay in a heap.

Wichita and Sedgwick County fire crews who helped search for victims said the tornado appeared to move from the southwest in a northeasterly direction. Outside the gutted convenience store, 46-year-old Brad Stauner had slept a few hours by his pickup truck with his German shepherd, Drako.

Contractors coordinate to rebuild Greensburg

BILL WILSON — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 17:15 CST

There's a call to arms in Kansas' building industry to rebuild Greensburg.

Representatives from the state's builders, architects, engineers and government held a conference call Wednesday morning to begin sorting through resources for the tornado-ravaged community.

The idea is to get the state's best builders and designers hooked up with home and business owners, led by the Kansas Building Industry Association and the Associated General Contractors of Kansas.

Lodging firm finds rooms for volunteers

JERRY SIEBENMARK — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 17:15 CST

Matt Rogers and other workers at Corporate Lodging Consultants Inc. are accustomed to responding to disasters across the country.

But the EF5 tornado that wiped out much of Greensburg on May 4 was different for Rogers and his Wichita-based employer because the disaster was in their backyard.

"It meant a whole lot more," said Rogers, director of rapid response for Corporate Lodging. "It just put a little pep in what we were doing."

Hospital returns, clad in canvas

BECCY TANNER — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 17:15 CST

A khaki canvas field hospital opened its flaps Wednesday and began offering health care to the residents of Kiowa County.

The hospital -- nine tents joined by a common corridor -- has 25 beds. It has water, electricity and air conditioning.

Its first emergency patient arrived Wednesday. The hospital is equipped for just about any service a regular community hospital provides.

A tornado museum for Greensburg?

DION LEFLER — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 17:15 CST

The town that already has the world's largest hand-dug well might one day have the world's largest tornado museum.

That was one of the more popular ideas raised during a meeting Tuesday of local business people who are just beginning to plan the economic future of this tornado-shattered community.

While acknowledging that it's a sensitive topic -- less than two weeks after tornadoes killed 12 people in Greensburg and neighboring counties and destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses -- local farmer and business owner Kim Gamble suggested the city take advantage of the international media exposure.

Baseball royalty drops in to help

DION LEFLER — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 17:15 CST

AID FOR GREENSBURG

Matt Deighton lost his home in the Greensburg tornado, but he salvaged the baseball his father played with in the Merchant League in the 1940s.

And it was a rare moment of joy amid the rubble Tuesday when he had the tattered, yet cherished, ball signed by a visiting Royals Hall of Fame second baseman.