2008 Woodie Awards
Will Greensburg bloom?
Greensburg residents say they will rebuild 'green'
Curtis Thom
Issue date: 7/26/07 Section: Front Page
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GREENSBURG - Simply put, it's just another day.
As the sun rises across the endless fields of wheat, and the wind breezes through the once plush trees of Greensburg, life has reached a bizarre sense of normality.
The football team congregates for practice at the town's tattered field, local farmers meet in Mullington for their daily breakfast and gossip about the upcoming crop, and the co-op opens its doors to inform customers of the latest prices for the impending harvest.
In these few small ways, life in Greensburg, a town about 290 miles west of Pittsburg, resembles that of any Midwestern small town, but a quick glance at the blank, decimated landscape tells a different story.
At 9:47 p.m. on Friday, May 4, an EF-5 tornado tore through Greensburg, killing 13 people and destroying 941 buildings.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, the tornado reached a speed of 260 miles per hour with a 1.8-mile swath.
Business as usual
Thomas Corns, president and chairman of the Greensburg State Bank, says the damage to his business was extensive, but that didn't deter him from opening for business as usual.
"On the following Monday, we opened our doors to the people and conducted transactions on the sidewalk in front of the rubble of our bank on a card table," said Corns.
Even before the tornado, the town's future seemed shaky at best.
"Our community consisted of roughly 1,600 people, a predominant amount of which were in their 60s," said Corns. "A problem we faced, much like other small towns, was keeping the young people in Greensburg. We would instill a good education in our children, and they would move away to attend college, and never come back, and our population began to decline as a result."
A disastrous tornado might have been the last straw. But some people saw this as an opportunity to create something from nothing. Here was a town with a blank canvas.
"Before the tornado had hit, the Kansas Department of Transportation had decided to reroute Highway 54 from its present location to a site two miles south of the city limits, bypassing Greensburg completely," said Corns. "Now that we have committed to rebuilding, the KDT has reworked previous plans and now Highway 54 is to remain in Greensburg, and that important piece of our economy will continue to be accessible."
As the sun rises across the endless fields of wheat, and the wind breezes through the once plush trees of Greensburg, life has reached a bizarre sense of normality.
The football team congregates for practice at the town's tattered field, local farmers meet in Mullington for their daily breakfast and gossip about the upcoming crop, and the co-op opens its doors to inform customers of the latest prices for the impending harvest.
In these few small ways, life in Greensburg, a town about 290 miles west of Pittsburg, resembles that of any Midwestern small town, but a quick glance at the blank, decimated landscape tells a different story.
At 9:47 p.m. on Friday, May 4, an EF-5 tornado tore through Greensburg, killing 13 people and destroying 941 buildings.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, the tornado reached a speed of 260 miles per hour with a 1.8-mile swath.
Business as usual
Thomas Corns, president and chairman of the Greensburg State Bank, says the damage to his business was extensive, but that didn't deter him from opening for business as usual.
"On the following Monday, we opened our doors to the people and conducted transactions on the sidewalk in front of the rubble of our bank on a card table," said Corns.
Even before the tornado, the town's future seemed shaky at best.
"Our community consisted of roughly 1,600 people, a predominant amount of which were in their 60s," said Corns. "A problem we faced, much like other small towns, was keeping the young people in Greensburg. We would instill a good education in our children, and they would move away to attend college, and never come back, and our population began to decline as a result."
A disastrous tornado might have been the last straw. But some people saw this as an opportunity to create something from nothing. Here was a town with a blank canvas.
"Before the tornado had hit, the Kansas Department of Transportation had decided to reroute Highway 54 from its present location to a site two miles south of the city limits, bypassing Greensburg completely," said Corns. "Now that we have committed to rebuilding, the KDT has reworked previous plans and now Highway 54 is to remain in Greensburg, and that important piece of our economy will continue to be accessible."
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