Greensburg, Kan. – The sound of a warning siren pealing through “Tornado Alley” sends residents scurrying for cover. The drill happens several times a year.
Friday night in this small south-central Kansas town, as sirens wailed about 9:25 p.m., Jose Peraza was driving his oil rig into town. He said he pulled over to escape driving hail. He and several others took refuge in a store freezer. About 9:45, the warning turned into the harshest reality.
A tornado, nearly a mile and a half wide, hit the town of 1,500 people with such force that little was left standing, save for the local pub and a grain elevator. At least nine people were killed in the storm – all but one in or near Greensburg, known as the home of the world’s largest hand-dug well.
Dozens were hurt, and rescuers – interrupted for a time by more warning sirens – rushed from building to building Saturday.
Crews called off the search for victims Saturday night as a fresh wave of tornadoes ripped through.
The National Weather Service said it had reports “well into the double digits” of twisters touching down in six southwest Kansas counties, but the extent of any new damage was not immediately known. Tornadoes were reported from South Dakota south into Oklahoma, where a high school and homes were damaged in Sweetwater. In the north-central Kansas town of Osborne, a tornado injured 11 people when it struck a pair of restaurants.
An estimated 95 percent of Greensburg’s buildings were shattered into splinters, broken glass and bent metal, the air redolent with the smell of sap from trees stripped of bark.
The force of the storm ripped the side off the freezer that protected Peraza and the others, but they survived. When he came out, the twister had chucked his truck – laden with 40,000 pounds of oil – “like nothing.”
The Bar H Tavern was briefly used as a makeshift morgue as officials tried to comprehend the devastation.
“All my downtown is gone,” City Administrator Steve Hewitt said. “My home is gone. My staff’s homes are gone. And we’ve got to find a way to get this to work and come to work every day and get this thing back on its feet. It’s going to be tough.”
Hewitt predicted rescue efforts could take “a good couple days” as survivors could be trapped in basements and under rubble.
“We continue to find folks, and this will go on for a good couple days – the rescue itself,” Hewitt said. “Even if you are in a basement, I mean your home is collapsed, and we’ve got to find a way to get to you.”
Survivors picked over the remnants of homes and possessions, still dazed by the twister’s strength and scope.
Jackie Robertson and her family collected wedding photos and other items from what had been her home.
“My heart just aches for everyone,” she said. “It is so surreal.”
Even with the warning sirens, Frank Gallant had no place to go.
Gallant, who uses a wheelchair, had no basement, so he moved to the center of his house with his miniature pinscher, No. 5.
“You just hope you’ve lived up to the Lord’s expectations, and you’re going to the good place and not the bad,” said Gallant, 47.
“It’s all over with now”
Salesman Terry Gaul pulled into a John Deere dealership to wait out what he thought was a hailstorm.
“The next thing we heard was this loud rumble,” said Gaul, his red polo shirt stained with blood and his face crossed with cuts. “There were these two John Deere combines sitting there, and the next thing I know, they started rocking. Then we started spinning like a windmill, and I said, ‘Oh, boy, it’s all over with now.”‘
The tornado rolled Gaul’s van, throwing him into the back seat.
When he came out, he noticed something missing.
“I never seen where those two combines went,” he said.
National Weather Service meteorologist Larry Ruthi said the path of damage was 1.4 miles wide and estimated that the tornado will be classified an “upper F-4 or an F-5” tornado, the strongest possible.
Amid the devastation, there were snippets of good news.
A neighbor – a young woman with a baby but no basement – was supposed to join state Rep. Dennis McKinney and his teen daughter in their basement, but she didn’t get there before the tornado hit.
So, McKinney said, he was especially anxious as he climbed his basement stairs after the storm passed over.
“My house was gone, and her house was gone, and I just didn’t see how she could be alive,” said McKinney. “And then she yelled at us. … We thought it was a miracle: They were hardly scratched, and everything above had gone.”
Gov. Kathleen Sebelius declared a disaster emergency for Kiowa County. The state sent 40 National Guard soldiers to help.
Sebelius said that Kansas was used to dealing with natural disasters.
“But one of the differences is that this entire community was wiped out,” she said. “We haven’t seen anything like this in a long, long time. … There is no school, no hospital, no grocery store. Everything you can think of that makes up a town is gone – except for the people.”
There were eight dead in Kiowa County, including Greensburg, and one in Pratt County, said Sharon Watson, spokeswoman for the Kansas adjutant general’s department.
FEMA ready to try to help
The White House said President Bush was briefed on the situation. Federal Emergency Management Agency spokeswoman Dawn Kinsey said FEMA was preparing to help once Kansas officials request assistance.
Scores of injured people were sent to hospitals as far away as Wichita, 110 miles to the east. More than 70 went to Pratt Regional Medical Center about 30 minutes away, with all but 14 treated and released, said hospital spokeswoman Kim Stivers.
Rescuers pulled about 30 people from the basement of a partially collapsed hospital Saturday, and most of them had minor injuries, Watson said.
On Friday, at least seven tornadoes were reported in Illinois, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Nebraska, though damage was minimal, officials said. No injuries were reported in any of those states.
Greensburg is about 150 miles east of southeastern Colorado, where the town of Holly was hit by a tornado in late March, killing two people and injuring 11. That twister destroyed 35 homes and damaged 32 others.
The Los Angeles Times contributed to this report.
