Back from OZ

In the world of Frank Baum a Kansas Tornado has the power to take you to places you've only dreamed of.  In reality they take you to places you don't want to imagine nightmares about.

Imagined 95% of your entire home community completely and utterly destroyed in 20 minutes. Imagine 11 of your neighbors killed. Imagine 63 more seriously injured.  And this is with a 3 hour warning and sirens just before the storm hit town.

No one wants to imagine such a nightmare.  But today we visited Greensburg, Kansas, to which all of this happened on what began as one clear day in 2007.

 We drove into town intending to drive right through on route 160 on our way to Medicine Lodge. Then we saw the signs for the 'Largest Hand Dug Well in the World' and I figured 'Why not?'  Mona figured I was nuts.  Till she saw the library across the park from the well site.

Well, the well site was actually pretty cool, but when I got in I saw the pictures on the wall of all the 2007 destruction and the two folks behind the counter told me all about it.  The woman lost an uncle in it, and both had lost pretty much everything they owned.

And then I learned the 'rest' of the story.

In the 7 years since that tragic day Greensburg has almost completely rebuilt itself from the ground up.  I asked the two folks how, and they said FEMA was an amazing help, and state and federal grants and low interest loans did the rest.  Looks like the US has learned a few things since Katrina hit New Orleans.

In fact, when similar destructive tornadoes hit Joplin Missouri, just a couple of hundred miles to the east, and Moore Oklahoma just a few hundred miles south, people from those devastated cities came to Greensburg to learn how to deal with their carnage.

Great skateboard park!

Yes, there are empty lots, flat concrete pads, and some 100 plus year old foundations that cannot be reused.  But the empty places have in many cases been turned into pleasant mowed green space, and the flat concrete or 'ruins' looking walls simply add character to a town that now looks very modern and up to date.

In our now 2 1/2 months of travel we have been joking about the fact that darn near every town calls its downtown 'historic' in hopes that it will bring a few history nuts like me off the bypass to shop or dine downtown.

This is the BEST example of a truly historic down (and entire) town that is completely historic we have found.

What the citizens of Kiowa County and Greensburg have done in just 7 years is amazing.

The theater on the right is newest.  The projectors are scheduled to arrive

soon, and this is NOT a private showplace, but a state of the art town owned theater where many kinds of performances and movies will be shown.

The former library had nothing like this.

And between the library and the new county museum is a completely recreated, using original furnishings from a smashed store, 1950's malt shop!  Fully operational and serving up a constant stream of goodies to people coming in while we were there.

Like I said, this town is HISTORIC.


-Ken