The Worst Night Tornado Of All Time | Greensburg EF5 Tornado Documentary

I'm downtown. I've just made it down here. There is absolutely nothing left of Greensburg. Oh my. All gone. Just everything is gone. There's nothing. It's just unbelievable. And I still think, did this really happen? I see all this and did this really happen? I go away from it for a few hours and I think maybe it didn't happen. I miss the older folks that used to be here. That sort of thing. It's just, it's different. It's like a, it's of course a new Greensburg, but it, I miss the old one a lot. I would do anything to have back what we had. No landmarks, nothing standing. We thought we had our lives well intact and everything would be great. But now what? You just got to start all over again. I have three loves in my life. I loved my home, I loved my church, and I loved my job, and they're all three gone. I've been to Korea, three tours in Vietnam, and I've had my ass whipped, but I've never had it stomped this bad. Can I say something, I would like to get a message to my kids that I haven't been having, had no contact with, that I'm still alive, babies, and I'm still here. All the whole town was gone. It was just, everything was just destroyed. Everywhere you looked and everywhere we went was just total destruction. I was just amazed at how quickly this circulation is still very powerful in this thunderstorm right here. It's only about 10 miles to the southwest of Greensburg. You really should think about heading down to your shelters. I've got a monster monster wedge tornado four to five miles south of Greensburg. This tornado is a very big tornado. Someone hold the light or something? Yeah, I got a light. Wait, can you hold the light with the other hand? I'm not an alarmist kind of guy, but the only thing, this storm is very scary. What we're seeing here is a very scary signature. Our souls are broke. This is about as strong as it gets, folks, unfortunately. Very powerful thunderstorm. If you live in Greensburg, I really suggest you go down to your storm shelter. Tornado on the ground, Jay. Tornado on the ground. Definite tornado on the ground. Tornado emergency has been issued for Greensburg now. You know, those are words that our friends at the National Weather Service office in Dodge City do not use lightly, and they don't use them very often. That circulation is right smack-dab over Greensburg. This is an extraordinarily dangerous situation. Now is the time, Greensburg. Your arrival time is imminent. The storm is knocking on your door. A confirmed, large, dangerous tornado. A tornado emergency now in effect for Greensburg. I mean like a mile wide type thing. Yes, I do. oh my gosh wow towards this town called greensburg get in your shelter and stay there the sun is in front of me this could be a two mile wide tornado right here i mean the damage that we're seeing pretty much bears that out now we knew this could happen well i sure hate to tell you this friends but it looks like that thing is right on top of Greensburg so your time is up is where the tornado cut its path and that is absolutely destroyed this is Greensburg a small town out on the Kansas plains, kind of in the middle of nowhere. 30 years ago, this place was home to more than 2,000 people. Today, there's about 700. Most towns this small pass through history almost unnoticed. In Kansas alone, there are hundreds just like it that you and I have never heard of and never will. But on the night of May 4th, 2007, something happened here that stamped Greensburg in the history books forever. The sun had gone down and under this sky, flashing with lightning, a nearly two mile wide nocturnal wedge tornado tore through the entire town. Every single home was either damaged or totally destroyed. And when the sun came up the next morning, there were only two buildings left standing. But the Greensburg story doesn't end there. Greensburg was founded in the 1800s as a railroad town out on the Kansas plains. Like a lot of towns in western Kansas, agriculture kept the place alive. Wheat fields, cattle, local businesses. This little town was full of families who'd known each other for generations. Because when you live in a town this small, the people of the town are a part of your daily routine. You know the owners of the grocery store. You recognize the same trucks driving down Main Street. You run into the same faces over and over again. For better or worse, it's almost like everybody knows everybody. Greensburg wasn't the kind of place people just passed through. For most residents, this little town wasn't just another town among many others. It was essentially their world. Of course, the Great Plains have always had a complicated relationship with weather, especially Kansas. Over the decades, towns across the state have been hit by some of the most violent tornadoes ever recorded. In 1966, a massive F5 tore through the state capital of Topeka, killing 17 people. Then, just 16 years before Greensburg, there was the 1991 Andover F5, a high-profile tornado that also claimed 17 lives. But if we go back a little further to 1955, we find something eerily similar to what happened here in Greensburg the same exact storm that had just produced the infamous Blackwell Oklahoma F5 went on to spawn a second F5 in the small town of Eudall Kansas a brutal historic tornado that killed or injured nearly half the town the Eudall F5 remains the deadliest tornado in Kansas history. A large violent F5 striking a small Kansas town in the middle of the night. Nearly the entire town was razed to the ground. In a lot of ways, the story of Eudall feels like a weird prophetic prequel to what was to come in Greensburg 52 years later. But in the spring of 2007, none of that history really mattered to the people living here. Greensburg wasn't thinking about Udall or Topeka or Andover, it was just another small Kansas town going through another typical Kansas spring. And despite all of the major weather events that Kansas had seen over the years, nothing about May 4th seemed unusual or memorable in any way. Not yet. Like most normal people, the residents of Greensburg weren't thinking about the possibility of losing everything that they had. They weren't thinking about whether anyone in town would ever walk through their front door again or if tonight was the last time. Nobody was thinking about how that familiar drive down Main Street would become just a memory or whether the people they had known their entire lives would still be there in the morning. They were just living their lives and in a matter of minutes all of it everything they know would be gone by the afternoon of May 4th the atmosphere over Kansas was becoming increasingly volatile surface analysis showed warm moisture-rich air surging northward into the state and strong winds higher in the atmosphere created an environment favorable for rotating supercell thunderstorms CAPE values were were approaching 5,000 joules per kilogram, providing an enormous amount of energy for storms to tap into. The Storm Prediction Center placed much of western Kansas under a rare high risk for severe weather, and as the sun began to set, thunderstorms began erupting across northern Oklahoma and the southern plains. Local meteorologists were beginning to closely monitor what was developing. Weather Now from the Emmy-winning K-Plan Weather Flex. Well, we're kind of playing watch and wait for the development of severe weather across parts of south-central to southwestern Kansas. Now, as we look at the visible satellite picture, you will notice that, you know, we started out overcast this morning, but look at all the sunshine across southwestern and now parts of south-central Kansas. That's really warming up the atmosphere. Notice how we've got a dry line right in here, and it's that dry line. and we're going to keep an eye in that area to see if we can see some severe thunderstorms erupt. As the sun begins to set, the atmospheric cap across western Kansas finally begins to break. Supercell thunderstorms start taking shape across the plains. They're towering updrafts rising miles into the sky as they begin to rotate violently. What we're watching and waiting is the atmosphere. If it develops thunderstorms, it can become severe very quickly. We're talking about a tornado threat. But we have an area in the atmosphere, a lid or a cap, if you will, that we've got to break through. Right now, it's holding very strong. Hopefully, it will hold strong. That will eliminate the severe thunderstorm threat. But we're kind of watching and waiting to see if that cap is going to erode. The NWS has issued a tornado warning for Kiowa County in south-central Kansas until 10 p.m. Central Daylight Time. A confirmed large and extremely dangerous tornado 14 miles south of Greensburg. Jay, currently, right now, just to let you know my position, I am on 160 Highway headed west, and I do have a very large funnel at this time, Jay. Very large funnel back towards the area of... Okay, tornado on the ground, Jay. Tornado on the ground. Definite tornado on the ground. Right in front of us. It's not to the road yet, but it's close. The leading edge of it's just coming over the road. The crosswind's shaking the truck really violently. Boy, we'll hope for the best. We're in there. Oh wow. We're going to have to turn into the wind. It's going to roll us. Holy cow. Keep videotaping. Just point it out that way. Oh, tornado to the east. This thing is so massive. We're two miles away from it. We can't get any closer for fear of rolling the truck. Confirmation of a tornado on the ground. This is approaching Greensburg. If you're in Greensburg, seek shelter immediately. For the Cake's Viper 3D, a very pronounced hook echo. Our chaser, Lanny Dean, reporting a very large tornado on the ground. This is about 12 miles southwest of Greensburg. This is about as strong as it gets, folks. Unfortunately, very powerful thunderstorm, very strong rotation. Very dangerous situation unfolding in southwest Kansas. And here we have a situation where we have a large tornado confirmed just to the south-southwest of Greensburg. This violent tornado was approaching Highway 183 at 9:28 p.m. Central. Is that our highway? About seven miles south of Greensburg. So we urge you in the Kiowa County, south of Greensburg and Greensburg itself, we urge you to move to shelter. This is an extremely dangerous situation. Moving towards Greensburg, it really doesn't show any signs of letting up. This circulation is still very powerful in this thunderstorm right here. It's only about 10 miles to the southwest of Greensburg. You know I've been on Cake Television a few years now, I am definitely not a chicken little kind of guy, but unfortunately with this very strong signature on radar, this is a very compelling radar signature, you really should think about heading down to your shelters. Now is the time Greensburg to take your tornado precautions, you need to be in your shelters, your arrival time is imminent, the storm is knocking on your door, a confirmed large dangerous tornado. KSN meteorologist Andrew Kozak. Okay it looks like now a tornado emergency has been issued for Greensburg now they are tracking that large extremely dangerous tornado you really need to get in the center of your house or your storm shelters immediately again this is an emergency situation for Greensburg. From the National Weather Service a tornado emergency now in effect for Greensburg. I'm not an alarmist kind of guy but the only thing this storm is very scary what What we're seeing here is a very scary signature. You should thought your neighbor's way here in Greensburg over these next couple of minutes as this very dangerous situation unfolds. This is from the National Weather Service in Dodge City. They have issued a tornado emergency. This is very rare. The tornado is in this general vicinity here, just to the south of Greensburg now, only by about three miles. You're live on Cake. What do you see? Jay, it's Laney. I've got a monster, monster wedge tornado south of Greensburg. Jay, this tornado is a very big tornado. For the people of Greensburg, today had started as just another Friday night. But now it's become something entirely different. A moment that will be told and retold for generations. People have asked me different times over the years, what did it sound like? Did you hear the freight train coming? No, I never heard a freight train. I have likened it to driving down the highway at 205 miles an hour and stick your head out the window. That may be what it sounds like. And that sound is etched in my memory. We hadn't been downstairs in the basement very long. The pressure changed. The atmosphere changed. It was profound. No one had to say anything. You could just sense it. We instantaneously knew something was wrong. Then it became worse and worse, and it felt like my head was just imploding. It was so powerful, so significant. and we knew then that this was different. This wasn't just a run-of-the-mill trip to the basement. It sounded like bowling balls hitting the side the house. Well I realize now that that was debris starting to hit from the front side of the tornado. Some people say it sounds like freight train. Maybe if you're a foot away from the freight train it's that loud. It was very loud. Well I sure hate to tell you this friends but it looks like that thing is right on top of Greensburg. So your time is up. Now, here's what I want you to do. Maybe we have some kids that are home alone tonight with mom and dad enjoying dinner out or something like that. Want to be moving to your tornado shelter. So here's what I want you to do. I want you to turn the volume up on your TV so that you can still hear me. Leave the volume up so that you can hear us talking with you as we go through these next few minutes. You want to move down to the basement and you want to go to the center of the basement. That's underneath something sturdy like a work bench, a work table, or maybe the stairs down to the basement if they're in the center of the room. Center of the basement, lowest level, away from windows. Go ahead and get into that room. Grab a blanket or a pillow or a mattress and pull it up over top of you now is the time greensburg is that just me or was that like a huge surprise i mean like a mile wide type thing do you see that yes i do oh my gosh wow if i recall i was headed towards this town called greensburg okay oh my gosh there's a huge monster on the ground dude that's a violent tornado uh yeah it's not that far away from us so it should be gonna be kidding me god oh man it's gonna get Jesus, look at the size of that thing, this could be a two mile wide tornado right here i mean the damage that we're seeing pretty much bears that out now we knew this could happen we never heard the house break up we didn't hear nails pulling we didn't hear glass breaking just suddenly i could feel rain and hail on my back as we were hunched down there in the basement and so i knew that part of the house had been compromised opened the bedroom door and the stairwell that goes up to the upstairs right by the bedroom door and it was evident there wasn't a house above us it was it was just really strange because everything was so quiet at that point and i walked up the stairs into nothing there was no laundry room there was no house and it was just so overwhelming I I couldn't say anything I opened up my eyes what I could because there was so much debris in them after I'd opened them up in the tornado I remember it was just like cold and rainy and like everything hurt I had like all these cuts and wounds now and I can't keep my eyes open and I was still just overwhelmed by what I was seeing and And keep in mind, it was still dark. Flashes of lightning came along, enough to see a little bit, but it was like a strobe light. You're not sure what you're seeing. But when I got to the top of the stairs, I looked towards the east end of the house and I could see the whole front east end of the house was sheared off. And of course, we were in such shock. I hauled it down to Judy. I said, well, the front part of her house is gone. And she just said, okay. You just couldn't, you know, really comprehend everything. What's so eerie about this moment is that essentially every survivor does the exact same thing. They emerge into the darkness from a pile of sharp, jagged debris, what used to be their home and they start wandering toward the distant glow of red and blue emergency lights some remain trapped in debris or worse it rolls us it smashes us into the co-op wall next thing I know the co-op is falling on top of us and it's like it wouldn't stop I could hear this roar and just huge sounds and glass flying brick flying my grandson screaming my kids are screaming my husband screaming my son-in-law screaming the pickup is just rolling and just carrying on so next thing I know I'm trying to get my body on top of Jace to save him he's screaming and we're like we're being buried alive. Behind me just about a quarter mile down the road is where the tornado cut its path and that is absolutely destroyed. Now as for the search and rescue at this point we do not know how many people are injured or are missing or may have even died as a result of this storm. At daybreak the Kansas Army National Guard will get here to Greensburg and assist in that search and rescue. Hopefully everyone will be found. I looked over, I could actually see a little hole and I saw those two people that were just here. I thought, oh my God, oh my God, you know, they're next, you know, and I didn't see them anymore. Next thing I know, all of us were screaming. The next thing I know, my husband took his fist and he pushed us through the windshield. He got out, he come over, he got my kids out, pulled all of us out. We went over there to the the car and those people were alive and she was bleeding we could actually feel the whole pickup being completely picked up like this toss the next thing i know we're just slammed into that wall i never knew such a hard force could do that i mean i know it's dangerous i can't believe it it was just amazing it just happened just like that it's like you just come out of blue it's like what happened you couldn't believe it it's just like that it was just amazing it happened so fast i I mean, it was just, it was all the horror The most horrifying thing was we were trying to walk to find shelter, all we seen was dark. Trash, debris, glass, you couldn't know where to walk. You didn't know what to do. It was just, it was like you were in a place where everything's just pitch black and there's nobody to help. This is it. There will be images forever etched in my mind. One of a dad holding his child, a baby, about the same age as my son that's at home, hugging him, clutching onto him, his wife sitting beside him, just sobbing and crying. Other relatives running up, greeting their loved ones that they have been frantically searching for while I was straight next to them, people calling on their cell phones, trying, doing anything, desperate to get a phone call out, desperate to find their family members. Those are all things, all moments, all emotions that no matter who you are, no matter what job you're doing, whether you're a police officer or even a reporter, they have to hit you on a personal level. John Deere dealership's gone. All of the convenience stores are gone. I've been uptown. I don't know what it looks like. It's pretty devastating. I've never seen anything like this in my life. Hello! Hey, now! I'm gonna see him. Is that if you're up? Scenes like this are unfolding all across Greensburg, with emergency crews still arriving, Many rescues are being carried out by ordinary residents, digging through hazardous debris in search of their neighbors. A light or something? Yeah, I got a light. Wait, can you hold the light? With the other hand? I want more guys over on the other side. So you gotta pick it up. All right, all right, let's do this. Get it up. Let's go, guys. Let's go to the east. Let's go, man. You see on the east side? Yeah. East. Hold, man, let's go. Hold. Survivors continue to make their way through the darkness, searching for neighbors, friends, and family. And with every block they walk, the scale of what's happened becomes more and more difficult to comprehend. Every landmark, every business, every street, everything they know has been touched by the storm. And at this point, a terrifying possibility begins to collectively dawn on many. What if it's not just this side of town The vehicles began delivering patients within 90 minutes of the storms. Doctors and nurses had heard weather reports and knew it would be a busy night. While some 55 came here with injuries, only some were critical. Most were lucky. What would you say about the damage to your town? It's horrendous. It's terrible. We'll have to find a way to find everybody at this point in time and evaluate our damage. I have no idea. But we know, I would say at this point in time, 100% of the community is damaged. this point we still really thought that it was just our part of town that may have been hit and that surely it wasn't the whole town you don't even think of that we'll find somebody that we can stay with we didn't know the magnitude of the storm we knew that there was five homes just outside of city limits and all five houses were gone we thought that's all the damage there was with the tornado and I couldn't believe no one came to help you'd think after an hour and a half someone would mosey along and give us some help but as we walked in the town it became evident why no one came to help. We thought the path had cut the south side of Greensburg because the last I talked to a storm spotter he said well it looks like it's headed northeast and might catch the south side of town. We didn't realize it changed paths and went right through the center of town. There were starting to be people moving in the streets and we had no idea right at that time that it was the whole city. It kind of started to dawn on me that people that were coming in for triage or waiting to get out were people from the other part of town did you lose your house too oh my gosh you mean the north side of town has also been hit and so it began to kind of sink in that are you saying the whole town has been hit by this tornado well and you'd ask other you know emergency people so like where have you you know well this part that part again still almost unbelievable what what are you talking about this doesn't hardly make sense I remember just being in shock because you know all the whole town was was gone it was just Main Street couldn't imagine Main Street being in such bad shape everything was just destroyed one young man had come down just had come down the street and we said well how come there's no fire trucks as well the fire stations gone What about the school? Oh, it's gone. What about the hospital? He said, it's gone. We couldn't imagine that level of destruction until we drove up there. The thing I kept repeating over and over was, it's all gone. Everything. Everything's gone. I mean, it wasn't like it was part of town. It wasn't like it was a street. It wasn't a block. It was literally everything. Everywhere you looked and everywhere we went, it was just total destruction. It's difficult or really impossible to fully understand what the people of Greensburg were going through in this moment. A lot of these people were born here and raised here. They inherited this town, passed down through generations. It was a part of their identity. Their parents lived here. Their grandparents lived here. They built this place. If you're from somewhere like this, then you know what I mean. So many of these people, they're not dreaming about some different life someday somewhere else they had all they wanted their families their friends their community their home wasn't just their house it was this town and then suddenly on a random friday night they put their pajamas on they tuck their kids into bed and a few minutes later everything they know is gone and for some of these people they never got a chance to tell anyone goodbye i got out from under that and i asked Harold where are you and he said i'm here and that was the last time i really heard him say anything it's not home anymore we don't have a home now it's all gone the killer tornado that ripped through Kiowa and Pratt County Friday night took everything including their father Alex Giles we went to bed asleep i woke my husband up And I said, you're not going to believe what I'm going to tell you. And I said, daddy's gone. Eighty-four-year-old Alex and his wife of 64 years, Bunny, were hunkered in the basement when the tornado hit. After the storm passed, Greg drove the few miles to make sure his parents were okay. There was about five or six of these blocks on top of him, and I got them off of him and got him uncovered enough, and I felt him. I knew he was going there, and mom was going there. Is he all right? Is he all right? I said, no, Mom, he's gone. I'm sorry, he's gone. She just said, I can't go on without him. I can't go on without him. I said, but we all are going to be lonely and not be able to go on without him, but God's going to give us strength and the people to help us. Our souls are broke, you know, but we are here, and we're still alive, and I thank God for that. I believe that this town will never regrow. well 600 people probably will be the limit to it we have three homes here we lost all three of them we've only been in this one five years but i had one around the corner lived in for 50 years but we'll make it i put three tours in Vietnam and i've had my ass whipped but i've never had it stomped this bad but i'm up and running again i'm 70 years old be 71 in june and it's hard to keep a good marine day. Thank God I'm alive. Bless you. Because there's no landmarks, nothing standing. It's a rude awakening. We thought we had our lives well intact and everything would be great, but now what? You just got to start all over again. It's hard to take. Until you're here and see it face to face in reality, you can't understand it. You can't believe it. So thankful that we're alive. You know, we've gone through this traumatic thing and you know the material things don't mean anything when we have ourselves it'll come back it will it doesn't look like it right now with all the devastation but it will it will it may be a new town now instead of an old town but i think it will it's like this tornado had a brain and it's kind of like it sat there and said okay where's the best way to go through town and destroy it and it took that path and it just wiped out everything it's just unbelievable what i remember is gone did you grow up there oh yeah all those children grew up here i have to tell you a photographer and i were driving around town and utterly just sat in silence because there was nothing you can say there's no words to describe and the pictures can't do justice the amount of damage that is done to this town in greensburg very fitting that people are just talking about wondering how to rebuild this early on saying i don't know how we can rebuild. The search and rescue operation continued for several days. The destruction was so complete that locating survivors and victims was an enormous challenge. By the time the search was over, 12 people had lost their lives. We're having to look for people in piles of rubble. The residences, they're not there anymore. All they are is a lot with nothing left. And there's a lot of it to look through. On Saturday, crews did their searches quickly in case someone was still alive and trapped. This time around, they took their time, wanting to leave, no doubt. It's possible. You know, the one thing is we never want to give up hope, and that's one thing that does bother us. We don't want to give up hope. Cadaver dogs look through homes still standing and the piles that used to be a home. 12 lives were taken by the tornado, and their names live on, carved into this stone memorial here. It's easy to think of tornado fatalities as a kind of abstract number, but for the people of Greensburg, they were anything but that. Behind every name was a life deeply connected to this community. They were a part of its history. Most of the victims were longtime elderly residents, farmers, business owners, grandparents, people who had seen the town change and grow, but would never live to see the aftermath or see how their community responded to being totally destroyed. The devastation in Greensburg quickly drew national attention. Just days after the tornado, President George Bush traveled to Kansas to see the destruction firsthand. They said to me, it's hard to describe how bad this community was hit. I declared a major disaster for that community and I hope that helps. It's going to take a long time for the community to recover and so we'll help in any way we can. There's a certain spirit in the Midwest of our country, a pioneer spirit that still exists and I'm confident this community will be rebuilt to the extent that we can help we will. The most important thing now though is for our citizens to ask for the good Lord to comfort those who are hurt. hurt. My mission is to, today though, is to lift people's spirits as best as I possibly can. It's to hopefully touch somebody's soul. It just made me appreciate our nation a lot. I'm thankful for it. I think we're going to get some aid. I think he's here to help us. It's kind of hard to believe. The president took tours of damaged businesses, demolished homes, also stopped by the command center where the plans to start the rebuilding process are put in place. A lot of us have seen the pictures about what happened here and the pictures don't do it justice. The site was as shocking for the president as it was for everyone else who sees all of this for the first time. There is a lot of destruction. Fortunately, a lot of folks have basements here in this part the world and live to see another day. Unfortunately, too many died. But it seemed the president was even more stunned by the resolve of the people he met along the way. I am struck by the strength of the character of the people who live here in the plains. People who refuse to be, who refuse to have their spirit affected by this storm. At this point, the search and rescue efforts are finished. The national news crews have packed up and moved on to other stories. The city of Greensburg is left to figure out where to go from here. Essentially, every home is gone. Every business gone. No running water, no gas, no power. For many people at this point, rebuilding the town didn't seem realistically possible. There was no blueprint for rebuilding a town that had lost everything. 95% of the community is gone. I mean, that's just the first number. That's not an exaggerated number. That's the facts. The city hall was destroyed. The courthouse was unusable. The police station was unusable. The fire stations were both destroyed, both the county and the city fire stations. The entire electrical grid was destroyed. The electrical generation facility was destroyed. The wastewater treatment plant was non-functional. As far as our utilities and our infrastructure, we just lost everything. The city has absolutely zero resources left. It just took everything. Schools are totally destroyed, all our facilities. What's standing here is what was a 100-foot water tower pointing to the world's largest hand-dug water well. The wrath, the fury of the wind that came through here. The question of whether Greensburg would survive at all was very much on the table. And yet, despite everything that had been lost, many survivors voiced a desire to stay. To start over and rebuild everything. So in the weeks and months that followed, discussions started taking place in temporary shelters, church gatherings, and community meetings. And many people arrived at that same conclusion. They didn't want to abandon Greensburg. It begins to set in that I've lost everything. What do I do now? And then the depression comes. And then somewhere along the line, you have to face facts that, well, have either got to move, it isn't the end of the world after all, or rebuild and then make plans. That's the reality. Probably the saddest time was the next day when people realized how bad it was. I grew up with hardly anything, so I've learned to get by with less. And I've learned that if you have faith that you can live through it. The debris would be cleared, the utilities would return, and over the next couple of months, the collective conversation about Greensburg's future would move in a direction that few people could have predicted. That's the landfill burning. I mean, that's Greensburg burning. And that's going to burn for months and months and months. That just makes me understand that it is still real. And the discussion started back, hey, you're going to have to rebuild the whole town. Let's make sure we do it in a right, prudent, and responsible manner. When I first heard green, I bristled a little, I'll be honest with you, because for 40, 50 years, we associated green with the east or the west coast, and we associated it with new age, some liberal thinking of those kind of things, of tree huggers, if you want to say, per se. But for us here, I look at our ancestors that pioneered this area. We're the original green people. They were original sustainable people because they lived within the means and the resources that they had available. The unfortunate thing about the environmental movement, especially in the last 40 years, has been that it's gotten politicized and just more so as the years went by to where it became a Republican, Democrat, conservative, liberal, red state, blue state issue. and how absurd that is, that the air we breathe, the water we drink, has become a political issue. This is a very conservative area of a very conservative state. So demographically getting these people to reframe the environmental movement in a way that is palatable to them has been a great success and it is one that I think is of great interest to the rest of the country. that's how you build community and you ensure that everybody that wants to be a part of it feels a part of it. Over the months that followed, Greensburg slowly started to take shape again. New homes, new businesses, new public buildings, so many of them built around the same ideas that had been discussed in those early meetings. Efficiency, sustainability, and making the most of a rare opportunity to start from scratch it was a process that would eventually make this small Kansas town unlike any other in the entire country Greensburg City hall boasts reclaimed wood from the town's destroyed power plant and the leftover coal ash from that plant was also repurposed and as for private homes all of them were built at least 35 percent more efficient than Kansas building codes require, with a full quarter of them being built 75% more efficient. And then there's the city-owned wind farm. Ten turbines on the edge of town, putting enough energy into the Kansas grid to cover all of the electricity needs of Greensburg's 900 residents. In three short years, this school system went from not having any buildings, blackboards, or books, to one of the greenest school buildings in the entire country. The $50 million project has two buildings on the campus housing K-12, cutting the energy bill in half. A new 50-kilowatt wind turbine greets fans at their new football field. And take a look at this gym. It's perfectly lit by natural light. It started with the 547 Arts Center. Named after the date of the tornado, the building creates 25 percent of its own energy from solar panels on the roof and three small wind turbines. What was once a destroyed small Kansas town slowly became something different. As the rebuilding continued, Greensburg took on this completely new collective vision. The city wanted to use the opportunity to become more than just another small town on the Kansas Plains. Their new identity became a community defined by the specific people who stayed, stayed in the decision they made to rebuild instead of leave to make something better than what they had people had every reason to walk away and didn't now some did leave and that's understandable but many stayed in Greensburg came together stayed together and moved forward together one of the most unusual and unique small towns in the entire country so what does this story mean? What even is the story of Greensburg? The more I thought about it, the more I see that the story of Greensburg is not something new. It's actually something ancient. Ordinary people faced with unfathomable loss, losing everything from your toothbrush to your car, your house, your business, everything gone. When people experience destruction at that level, it can break you and break your spirit. But it's what happens after that that defines you. That's the story. The rebuilding. The resilience. We see this in so many aspects of life. But in Greensburg it happened on a scale that's impossible to comprehend. And yet it's what comes after the heartbreak that tells the story. The painful process of putting something back together that's been completely broken it's a pattern as old as humanity itself and in that sense Greensburg is one of the clearest examples of that it's the tornado siren that's easily the loudest siren i've ever heard wow and i think that Greensburg is one of the clearest examples of that that i've ever seen it's one of those experiences i don't ever want to repeat but i wouldn't trade it for the world because of all that it is, all the benefits that have come out of it. In a sense, that's kind of a odd thing, but I think a greater appreciation for life. Less interest in material stuff. I mean, you can replace stuff if you're alive, and we had that sense right away as a family. We were all alive and houses injured We can replace the things that we've lost. I think it has made especially my wife and me a little less interested in accumulating stuff because what do you need to live a happy satisfied life what do you really need to be content I think for us as a community it's that sense of we're all in this together for us who are in it and have lived with it you know like have a new resilience maybe hey I've been through that I think I can handle this. I've thought that different times. I can handle it because I did that. This has made me a different person for better. You know, I've lost a child. I've lost a job. I've lost a town. I can live through whatever's going on today.