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.

Survivor deals with post-tornado trauma with journal

STAN FINGER — Wed, 02 May 2012 23:29 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.

A greener Greensburg grows on Kansas prairie

FRED MANN — Wed, 02 May 2012 23:29 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.

Megan Gardiner's account of surviving the Greensburg tornado

Wed, 02 May 2012 23:29 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.

Recovering Greensburg marks milestone

ROY WENZL AND JILLIAN COHAN — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 10:42 CST

Seldom has such a small graduating high school class in Kansas received such a rousing sendoff from such a large crowd or in such strange and evocative circumstances.

In the first high school commencement speech he has given, President George W. Bush on Sunday called upon the 18 teenagers of the Greensburg class of 2008 to consider a life of service to others. His speech came exactly one year after the town was leveled by a tornado.

Their perseverance in completing school while helping their parents and others rebuild will shape their character all their lives, he told them.

'Flirting' with Bush nets a surprise kiss

PHYLLIS JACOBS GRIEKSPOOR — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 10:42 CST

When President George W. Bush returned to McConnell Air Force Base late Sunday afternoon after his visit to Greensburg, a crowd of about 300 service personnel and their family members were waiting.

The crowd cheered wildly as Bush stepped from Marine One. The president strode quickly toward them, shaking hands, offering greetings and signing autographs.

Several dads lifted children to their shoulders for a better look at Bush, and those in the crowd most anxious to touch the president waved and called out.

Rebuild of Greensburg theater breaks ground

SOLI SALGADO — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 06:43 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.

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.

On tornado anniversary, Greensburg reflects

BECCY TANNER — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 13:45 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.

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.

Looking back can help prepare for future tornadoes

STAN FINGER — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 14:57 CDT

It has been 10 years since a tornado last hit Wichita. If that doesn't seem very long, consider this: When an F4 tornado touched down on the night of May 3, 1999, and gashed Haysville's center and Wichita's south side, officials were fretting about the arrival of Y2K, 9/11 was only a number people called in emergencies and the economy was booming.

It's also long enough for people to forget -- and that worries local authorities as Severe Weather Awareness Week arrives this week in Kansas.

"I think there is a little bit of complacency setting in," Sedgwick County Commissioner Tim Norton said.

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.

Dillons store reopens in Greensburg

STAN FINGER — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 09:37 CST

It looked and sounded like a homecoming pep rally in Greensburg on Wednesday, with more than 100 people crowded together, beaming as the high school pep band played at full throttle.

In a sense, it was Homecoming Day: A grocery store has returned to Greensburg.

A new Dillons -- the south-central Kansas town's largest retailer -- opened Wednesday, about 21 months after a tornado wiped out 95 percent of the town, killing 11 people.

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.

Scientists to chase storms, tornadoes through Kansas

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 01:40 CDT

For most people, tornadoes are something to flee.

But next month a small army of scientists will be doing just the opposite, crisscrossing the nation's middle -- including Kansas -- in search of twisters.

Organized by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Science Foundation, Operation Vortex2 will last from May 10 to June 13.

Kansas tornadoes put in perspective

HURST LAVIANA — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 09:30 CDT

A tornado fact your favorite forecaster probably doesn't have: June 10 is a day to watch out for in Kansas. Over the past half-century, at least one tornado has touched down in the state 22 times on that date -- six more times than any other day. A total of 53 tornadoes have touched down on June 10 since 1950. You might also keep your eye on May 4 and May 5 -- the only dates that have recorded more than 80 tornado touch-downs since 1950.

And one statistic you probably don't hear much: In a typical year, the annual tornado death toll in Kansas is zero.

The figures come from the National Climatic Data Center's Storm Events Database, which started tracking tornadoes in 1950 and was later expanded to include all significant weather events.

Switch to digital TV puts more importance on weather radios

STAN FINGER — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 02:39 CDT

Don't count on having a portable TV in the basement or storm shelter with you this spring to monitor tornado watches and warnings.

With the conversion to digital signals earlier this year, they're not going to work.

That means NOAA weather radios, cell phone services and Internet access will be more important than ever, officials say.