Greensburg, Kansas Blogging

Update2: You should also check for updates here at Patsy Terrell's blog.

Update: Chaser video via Drudge who has more links at top.

I'm looking for what I can find out about Greensburg, KS on the blogs. The town was wiped off the map by a tornado. I'll update at top and see if I can find anything else unique.

An area blog informs The Today Show is reaching out to bloggers, too. Major media is getting good at that in more and more instances.

More tornado activity in the area. Search suspended due to weather for now.

One blogger who visited last year posts some great pictures of a cafe soda fountain and writes about the town, includes help contact information.

Kansas dot com has aerial views - block after block leveled.

More pictures and word that Greensburg was the home of the world's largest hand-dug well. And so it is, or was, I guess.

Evidently that was some deal according to another blogger.

There are several of my family members buried in cemetaries(sic) in Greensburg and the surrounding areas. One of the things I always remembered about Greensburg was that it was the home of the world's largest hand-dug well

Comments

[southdakotaboy]

If you have never been in a tornado words can't really begin to describe the experience. I was about 10 when one went by our ranch a leveled some buildings and to this day I can still remember what it sounded like. They can appear out of no where and last for a few seconds or several minutes. Since then I have see several more but never from as close thank God. My wife and several of her friends were on their way back from Souix Falls today and saw one north of I-90 by Salem. We here in South Dakota have towns leveled by tornados on a somewhat regular basis, most aren't as big as Greensburg though.

[Old Trooper]

Allrighty then.....Where is FEMA?

Get those $2,000 debit cards ready, send those mobile homes, set up Red Cross kitchens, Fox News satelite trucks, Shep Smith in raincoat and carhart trousers and pocket T-Shirt.. Wheres Al Sharpton, Hillary Clinton, Jesse Jackson on scene to help...Nope..Wait.a.Damn.minnute...
Its just a small town in Kansas....no big photo ops...probably no minority residents...only ten fatalities? That ain`t news,it is just reality...

Forget it. It is just Kansas. Just the Midwest. Just the heart of hard scratch America.
Not worth their time.....these poor white folks are on their own. Only 1,400 Americans with their town in rubble? Maybe only 900 voters there?

Not worth attention.

[Phoenix]

Whoa. The pictures are horrific. The thing that grabbed my attention was the trees. Spooky!

I lived in Kansas two different times in my life and have been through a few tornadoes. My brother and I ran home from school in Leavenworth and got caught in the tornado. The noise was deafening and sounded just like a freight train. Just before I turned the corner to run to my house, I watched every single window in a huge, Victorian mansion pop out. No damage to the house - the windows just popped out. Right at that instant my slip was ripped off my body. I know that sounds funny, but I had on a skirt and a slip, and somehow the slip disappeared. My brother ran across the yard and a tree limb about fifteen inches in diameter and 20 feet long fell between us and cracked a cement birdbath. Scary stuff but we were too excited and dumb to be really scared. We'd drive down highways parallel with a tornado and think nothing of it.

I noticed the letter from The Today Show was interested in people talking about the event. I wonder if they will set up a fund or if they just want eye witnesses? I'm sure the Red Cross will set something up where people can donate.

[Patsy Terrell]

I've been posting updates on Greensburg info all day, including contact info for where people can get help.

[Tully]

A brief post from Wichita (a hundred miles east of Greenburg) over at Stubborn Facts, including the 1996 USGS aerial photo and links to the local coverage.

http://stubbornfacts.us/

Without the twenty minutes warning from the National Weather Service, the death toll could have easily been in the hundreds. I saw first-hand the immediate aftermath of the Hesston/Goessel, Andover, and Moore F5 tornados, and the destruction is something that's hard to comprehend until you've seen it up close.

[Tully]

A brief post from Wichita (a hundred miles east of Greenburg) over at Stubborn Facts, including the 1996 USGS aerial photo and links to the local coverage.

http://stubbornfacts.us/

Without the twenty minutes warning from the National Weather Service, the death toll could have easily been in the hundreds. I saw first-hand the immediate aftermath of the Hesston/Goessel, Andover, and Moore F5 tornados, and the destruction is something that's hard to comprehend until you've seen it up close.

[Tully]

Governor Sebelius' claim that Iraq deployments of the Kansas National Guard will hamper the Greensburg effort thoroughly debunked. Pure partisan pandering.

http://stubbornfacts.us/domestic_policy/natural_disasters/twister