Members of the faith community survey tornado damage. Photo: Mennonite Disaster Service ( DNN)
Residents are being allowed back into Greensburg today to survey what's left of their homes after a deadly tornado on Friday. Meanwhile, residents in other parts of of the region are evacuating their homes due to flooding from the same storm system.
In Greensburg, Kansas, traffic was backed up Monday morning as officials checked identification and allowed residents into the town. Kevin King, director of Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS), surveyed the destruction from the Greensburg tornado on Saturday and was amazed.
"The town was just razed," he said. "It's absolutely unbelievable. The brick walls of churches and homes, every brick was separated. It wasn't just walls that fell over together, bricks are just strewn about."
King was in the central Kansas area Friday to attend a graduation ceremony at Heston College. When he and his crew heard about the tornado, they immediately drove to Greensburg to help. Greensburg Mennonite Church and its parsonage were destroyed when the twister hit shortly before 10 p.m., but the pastor and his family were not injured.
The National Weather Service confirmed Sunday that the tornado was an EF-5 with winds of more than 200 miles per hour. It left a 22-mile long path of destruction and was 1.7 miles wide.
The storm killed at least eight people and injured 60 others when it tore through the small rural town of about 1,600 located 110 miles west of Wichita. A ninth fatality was reported in a nearby county.
King said little remains of most homes. The west side of the town suffered the most damage, with every building nearly obliterated.
"There are just piles of rubble 4 feet high all over the place," King said. "Trees are stripped down to 8 and 9 feet tall."
He said a few structures on the east side of town had some walls remaining and several more buildings were still standing.
Kevin King praised the nearby town of Haviland for being so open and welcoming to the hundreds of Greensburg families sheltered there. He said the mood at the shelters was one of shock.
"You can easily hear neighbors asking each other, 'Do you have a house? No? Me neither,'" he said. "And they're also saying, 'My house is gone, how about yours?' It's quite moving here for these residents."
Search and rescue teams pulled trapped families from basements throughout the day Saturday. Many spent frightening moments praying for their lives as the tornado passed overhead.
Cherri and Bob Baer are disaster response representatives from the United Methodist Committee on Relief. Cherrie was shocked by images of the destruction. She said they reminded her of the devastation on the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina.
"Usually in a Kansas tornado or elsewhere, there's the path of destruction, and then on the left and right side there are people who can come help," she said. "Yet in a hurricane everyone is affected, and that's how this was.
"Everyone was affected," she said. "It included everyone and it took out everyone."
One local emergency official described the situation as "the most significant emergency the state of Kansas has faced in a long, long time."
There are no Presbyterian Churches within Greensburg, Kansas. PDA will support the ecumenical, interfaith, and community disaster response efforts as well as supporting the Presbytery response through Presbyterian Churches in neighboring communities.
The Kansas chapter of Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (VOAD) will meet Tuesday, May 8, 2007, to coordinate its response.
National and regional VOADs are encouraging the public to donate funds to the responders and to not send in any unsolicited supplies or clothing. They also urged people to not just show up in Greensburg to volunteer.
Baer said that volunteer teams were on standby until they are allowed entry to the town.
"I think the volunteers may just have to hang it up for a while," she said. "They're not going to let us in there. (The city) is assessing which structures volunteers can be around to see if any are safe to have volunteers around."
One Great Hour of Sharing funds and funds designated for disaster response in the United States are available for immediate disbursement. Presbyterian Disaster Assistance National Response Team (PDA-NRT) member Don Hampton is already in Wichita, and will be joined by PDA-NRT member Bob Houser. They will connect with the Presbytery of Southern Kansas office and then proceed over to the affected area, connecting with pastors in the region.
This storm has caused additional damage. [Read more]
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