MONDAY, JUNE 18, 2012
PAGE 14
DISASTERS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Tornado-torn town rebuilt eco-friendly
Wind, which stripped many Greensburg trees of their bark during the tornado, is now harnessed by wind turbines all over the town. The wind turbines are one of several clean energy sources the town is utilizing to save on energy costs and to reduce its carbon footprint.
CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
ALEX TRETBAR
atretbar@kansan.com
At first, Greensburg looks similar to the many small towns you would pass through on U.S. Highway 54.
But there are also barren patches of land, many of them dotted with dilapidated homes, shacks and abandoned farm equipment. And scattered among the handful of these blank blocks are newly built homes, strangely juxtaposed against the remaining wreckage of a tornado that leveled nearly all of Greensburg five years ago. The town is still here because of a massive amount of support from countless individuals since the disaster. But the town hasn't just been rebuilt — Greensburg has been reenvisioned. Bob Dixson, mayor of Greensburg, is certainly proud of how far the town has come, but he doesn't consider the mission complete.
"We want to keep growing," said Dixson, 58. "We can never 'be done,' because you're either growing or you're dying. There's no staying put in one place."
The Tornado
On May 4, 2007, an EF5 (the most damaging category, with winds over 200 mph) tornado struck Greensburg, a 1.5 square-mile town in south-central Kansas, 110 miles west of Wichita. The tornado was approximately 1.7 miles across, wide enough to encompass the small town of about 1,400 people. National Weather Service estimated the tornado's wind speed to be 205 mph. Eleven people died and 95 percent of the town was completely destroyed. The only historic building downtown to survive was the S.D. Robinett Building, today an antique shop.
A sergeant for the Kiowa County
Police Department, Zane Huffman, was on duty the night of the storm, helping clear the trashed roads. Huffman, 48, knew where his children were at the time of the tornado, but had no way of contacting them — cell phone reception was shot within the city limits. People searching for loved ones immediately after the tornado were forced to drive to nearby Haviland or Mullinville and attempt calls to friends and family, but the disabled phone service in Greensburg made it unlikely for anyone within the city to receive the calls. Navigating the streets was impossible, so it was out of the question to physically search for anyone in the aftermath
"You couldn't get anywhere," Huffman said of the debris-ridden streets. "I tried calling the next morning when I was off duty, but couldn't get a hold of them. I didn't see or talk to my two kids until the
next afternoon."
Houses were in pieces in the street, personal belongings strewn among splintered wood and shattered glass. Kathleen Sebelius, Kansas governor then, announced her plan for Greensburg to become the "greenest city in the state." The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) were immediately deployed, along with volunteers from throughout the country. Greensburg began the slow but steady healing process.
FEMA, EPA and Greensburg officials created an immediate recovery plan and a long-term recovery plan, the latter containing most of the "green" initiatives. Perhaps the most important immediate goal, aside from cleanup, was FEMA's building of 300 trailers over the first two years, to assist residents moving back into town (it was eventually dubbed "FEMAville," among a handful of other nicknames). The agency also set up trailers over the summer to serve as classrooms for the start of school in August.
The Recovery
Teigan Ellegood, now an eighth-gradeer at Kiowa County Junior High in Greensburg, didn't live in town when the tornado hit, but his family uprooted and moved from a nearby town right away to join in the recovery effort. Ellegood's family had lost everything in a house fire four years before the 2007 Greensburg tornado. Ellegood, 15, says it was his mother's decision.
"She knew what it was like to lose everything," he said.
The family slept on the floor of a nearby church, crammed alongside displaced families, when they arrived in Greensburg the month after the tornado. Ellegood attended fifth grade in a trailer that fall
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