On Mar 30, 8:13*pm, GarageWoodworks
wrote:
On Mar 30, 7:55*pm, dpb wrote:



GarageWoodworks wrote:

...

My local rag ran a story on the twister today w/ a damage path.
it's in our paper today for those that want to read about it.

A link might help.

http://www.news-record.com/content/2...aught_in_the_w....

Certainly glad nobody hurt...

http://www.inhabitat.com/wp-content/uploads/greensburgh1.jpg

Partial shot of what Greensburg looked like shortly (like several weeks,
I'd guess, didn't see an indication when the photo was actually taken
but there's been a ton of debris hauled off before this was taken--it
was impossible to drive virtually anywhere immediately after).

I went up (it's about 80 miles from us) early the morning after and came
up the south end of main street which is a mile east of the main highway
that was blocked off. *Once to the damage area in town, you couldn't
tell which was street and which was block--the debris field was 3-ft
deep essentially uniform. *Damage was so complete locals couldn't even
recognize which block/intersection was which much of the time.

Spent that day helping several folks recover enough belongings to be
able to make it to relatives or motels that evening and many of the next
several weeks as could in cleanup...after the second day they cordoned
off the entire community and only through qualified organizations were
anybody allowed in/out for about two months or maybe even longer...

Link to a storm chasers' page who chased it back north from OK/TX from
about Coldwater,KS, where he first saw it about 40 miles S of Greensburg.

http://www.hprcc.unl.edu/nebraska/may4-2007Greensburg-Kansas-tornado.....

It'll be a while 'afore I'll be forgettin' this-here 'un...this is third
year coming up and I've become much more diligent about my storm spotter
training and making sure the weather radio has batteries...

--

Very sad. *It doesn't get any worse than what happened in Greensburg.

We used to live in Wichita, about 1.5 hours east of Greensburg.
Before the tornado we used to drive through from time to time on the
way to Colorado or New Mexico. It was a pretty town and we always
thought the Green part of their name went with the hundreds of big
trees all around the town. The big feature of Greenburg was the
largest hand-dug will in a park a few blocks off of the highway. A
very pretty town and park.

We dove through on the way to Taos in October of '08 and it almost
made us cry. From the highway you could see the horizon in all
directions. No houses, few buildings and all of the trees were
stripped and destroyed. Besides a concrete grain elevator that
survived the storm most of the above ground structures were tents and
temporary buildings put up by disaster workers. There were a few
starts on new homes.

If good comes from disaster, Greensburg might well become the model
for green communities. With the help of some organizations, the
government and a few celebrities they have committed to incorporate
green technology into their rebuild. This has come at the expense of
a few long-time residents who apparently are having difficulty
affording some of their new building standards. Time will tell.

RonB