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File photo
Don Stimpson tries to salvage what he can from the Big Well Gift Shop last year after the Greensburg tornado. Sunday marks the one-year anniversary of the historic twister which destroyed most of the small Kansas town.
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Locals help pick up the pieces as Greensburg recovery continues
By CLEON RICKEL, Herald Senior Writer
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A year ago Sunday, one of the largest tornadoes in the state’s recorded history ripped into south central Kansas on a spring night, wiping nearly all of Greensburg and part of surrounding Kiowa County off the map, and killing 11 people.
Almost from the beginning and in the year since, Franklin County residents have journeyed to Greensburg to help the stricken community.
Greensburg residents plan to emerge from the disaster even stronger and they’ve started the process, those people who have helped say.
A greener GreensburgIn rebuilding, Greensburg is going green.
“From the beginning they said they were going to look at building as green as possible and saving on electrical and heating through energy efficiency,” Alan Radcliffe, Franklin County emergency management director, said.
“ ... They have the perfect opportunity. All the buildings were scraped away and they can rebuild the way they want.”
So far, about 40 homes have been built to environmentally friendly specifications, with added insulation, double-pane windows and high-efficiency compact-fluorescent lights. Some buildings have extra-large, south-facing windows that take advantage of sunlight to heat and illuminate the home. Many returning homeowners are also using recycled materials, including lumber and bricks salvaged from the twister.
Builders are installing water-efficient faucets, shower heads, toilets and appliances, and a few homes will also have solar panels to provide power.
“They want to do it right,” Craig Carlson, a member of a team from Ottawa’s Westminster Presbyterian Church that was in Greensburg last week, said.
They help build new houses with large “Lego-like” foam blocks, he said.
They stacked the blocks and concrete was poured inside and outside the block to form the exterior walls, he said.
There are still areas in which there is one new house standing alone in an empty block, he said.
“But they still have a lot of hope out there,” Carlson said.
Survivors’ storiesMembers of the mission who help build houses also included Briley Rivers, Chris and John Brockway, Linda Neff, Shelly Diamond, Jason Audis, Scott Steele, Larry Reh, Doug Harris, Jim Hyatt, Jeff Oleson and Craig Gorton.
As they worked, they heard stories from Greensburg residents who survived the tornado.
One told them that after the tornado hit his house, blowing out the windows, he went upstairs to dead silence.
“Then the hail started coming down and he raced down into the basement,” Carlson said. “He realized he had been in the eye of the tornado.
“It was so big he could go upstairs before the back of the tornado hit.”
When the back wall of the tornado hit, the man’s house was leveled, he said.
Others told of standing outside after the tornado hit and turning on flashlights in the inky blackness, Carlson said.
They said they were puzzled because they could see so many lights so far away, he said.
“The storm had taken everything away and there were no buildings to obstruct their sight,” Carlson said.
A return tripKara Cunningham, a professor at Ottawa University, was visiting her parents in Pratt the night the storm hit Greensburg.
“Because it was night, no one could see the tornado,” she said.
She offered her help to the Red Cross and within days Cunningham and a group of OU students were helping the Red Cross handle public information duties.
They were stunned by the devastation and mountains of debris, she said.
“All of the homes were gone,” Cunningham said. “But they were looking at the future.”
They returned two months later to help the Red Cross again.
Rebuilding was hampered by the lack of electricity and other utilities, she said.
“It was like a ghost town,” Cunningham said. “You rarely saw anyone.
“It was eerie.”
Cunningham planned to be back in Greensburg this weekend, when the town is having a commemoration of the disaster, dubbed ‘‘Tragedy to Triumph — Greensburg Rising.’’ As part of the event, President Bush will deliver the high school commencement address Sunday.
Elusive recoveryWhether Greensburg will completely recover, despite their efforts to rebuild green, is another question.
Greensburg was basically a bedroom community, Radcliffe said. Some locals and experts predict only half of the original 1,600 population will return, he said.
The schools and most government offices are in temporary units, he said.
Many of the 700 people who remain in Greensburg are still living in ‘‘FEMAville,’’ the mobile home park set up by the Federal Emergency Management Agency on the outskirts of town.
Many of those who were wiped out moved to surrounding towns and probably won’t be back, he said.
The town’s future depends on regaining basic businesses, such as a full-service grocery store and a pharmacy, and that’s been a problem although many businesses have promised to return, he said.
But the same location and circumstances that made Greensburg attractive as a bedroom community still remain, he said.
And Greensburg’s determination to rebuild green will be another drawing point, he said.
“I think they’re going to see some growth in the next 10 years,” Radcliffe said. “Ten years from now, I think they’ll be as big or bigger than they were when the tornado hit.”
Learning from disasterBecause of his experience in helping emergency authorities in Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina, Radcliffe was one of the first people called when the tornado hit and he served and the No. 2 official in charge of rescue and recovery at Greensburg.
Both Katrina and Greensburg showed that not only do massive disasters destroy homes and harms lives, they destroy the fabric of civilization, disrupting governments and eliminating utilities, Radcliffe said.
Government officials themselves face property losses and they have to take care of their families, he said.
Radcliffe and other emergency officials summoned by the state ran rescue operations and started recovery efforts in the first days following the tornado.
When he left the first time, the emergency officials were starting to turn over the effort to local officials.
The second time Radcliffe went to Greensburg a few weeks later, he helped turnover the effort completely to local officials.
Since Katrina, and especially since Greensburg, state emergency officials have been rapidly building a standard procedure and a network of trained officials who can go anywhere at anytime for a disaster occurring the state.
Emergency teams will bring their own supplies and equipment rather depend on a hit community, he said.
“The goal is for an incident command team to sustain themselves for 72 hours,” Radcliffe said. “When we go, we’re not going to be a burden to the community we’re trying to help.”
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