THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
MONDAY, JUNE 18, 2012
PAGE 15
CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
Mayor Bob Dixon uses his laptop to show an aerial view of the destruction the town of Greensburg faced in the wake of the 2007 tornado. The tornado was an EF5 --- the strongest kind --- with an estimated wind speed of 205 mph and a diameter of 1.7 miles.
CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
Ray Stegman, who was appointed Greensubrg's Emergency Manager two days after the tornado, stands in his workshop in Greensburg, Kan.
— most trailers housed two grades from kindergarten through twelfth.
"Most of the kids I talked to on the first day of school were relieved," Ellegood says. "They didn't think they'd have an education that year."
But many people didn't return to Greensburg after the tornado. The town lost about half its population to emigration — the population is currently about 777. Residents claimed their insurance money and moved away — the rebuilding process was too tedious and expensive for many.
Greensburg Today
Over time, natural beauty has grown in and around the remaining ruins. And the town isn't ashamed of or hiding the telltale signs of the major disaster. An old auto-repair garage has, "Open as soon as we can," endearingly spray-painted on its side facing the highway.
The town doesn't look like your typical rural Kansas town, especially one that was destroyed by a tornado five years ago. Most prominently, there are ten large wind turbines three miles outside of town and smaller turbines throughout the city. Many of the municipal buildings near the center of town are sleek, modern structures you might find in Seattle or Tokyo (Mayor Dixson likens the rooftop solar panels to skate park ramps). But they aren't designed this way
for style.
Greensburg was the first U.S. town to achieve LEED Platinum ratings for all its city-owned buildings. LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Platinum is the highest rating a building can receive under the U.S. Green Building Council's rating system. Greensburg has the most LEED-certified buildings per capita in the world, making it a global model for researchers, students and developers in the sustainable energy field.
The impressive SunChips Business Incubator (perhaps Greensburg's most practical and progressive addition) is a key component to the town's long-term recovery plan. SunChips donated $1 million toward the building's design and execution, and Leonardo DiCaprio chipped in another $400,000. The U.S. Department of Agriculture and Greensburg covered the rest.
The building offers five streetlevel retail spaces and nine second-level offices as well as a storm shelter. The incubator, completed two years after the tornado, is city-owned and LEED Platinum-certified. Make it easier for new local businesses to get off the ground and "hatch out" into the city to survive on their own, as Mayor Dixon puts it.
Photovoltaic solar panels on the
SEE GREENSBURG PAGE 16