Greenburg, Kansas: Midwestern Hurricane Katrina?

I left Wichita yesterday and headed west on highway 55 going west. As the sun started to get lower, I pulled out the map and looked for camping spots marked with a little tent icon. I spotted one not to far away and set the GPS to take me there.

By coincidence, it took me straight to Greensburg, Kansas.

Greensburg was hit by an F5 tornado in 2007 that destroyed 95 percent of the city and killed eleven people. I'd only heard of it when my brother mentioned a television show on the Discovery Channel about how the town was attempting to rebuild as a "Green" town since then.

When the possible campsite in town turned out to be a no-go, I decided to drive around a bit and see what the town looked like. At first, I didn't see anything that looked too unusual. But after slowing down and paying attention to my surroundings I realized the devasation had been all around me: everything was gone but ghosts remained.

I found myself next to a patch of land that I assumed was just a big open lot with green grass and a few old trees growing on it. But when I looked closer I saw the cement driveways that used to connect the road with the driveways of houses. Houses that were completely gone except for either a flat cement foundation or a dug-out basement surrounded by cement walls.

The trees weren't just old, but a closer look showed they'd been ravaged by wind and rain. These few trees represented the few that were strong enough and lucky enough to survive the powerful tornado.

I had to drive a few streets over to see houses still standing with visible damage. Once my eyes trained to it I could imagine how the area must have looked immediately after the storm: trees knocked down, limbs and green leaves littering the roads, houses with roofs blown off, windows shattered and brick walls caving in.

Two years later many houses are either significantly repaired to the point where they look fine or replaced by brand new homes that look like any clean, suburban neighborhood. A few structures still remain without any repair work done, and some properties show only remnants of what once was standing there.

A major reconstruction effort is taking place along their main street. I spotted only one building that looked like it was there more than fifty years ago. A few buildings look have an extremely modern look that looks fairly out of place in a town otherwise simple, wholesome and humble.


Wikipedia's entry on Greensburg, Kansas