Aerials of Greensburg Tornado Damage CLICK HERE
This town was flattened by a cat 5 mile wide twister. Horrible pictures.
found by Bill Taylor
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Hey! The grain elevator is still there – I guess it was the only building built to standard
shame that kansas will suffer the same fate as new orleans
gotta love that small government!
The difficult thing for most people right now is that there is no place to put things they recover from the wreckage. We have a friend who’s family lost everything in Greensburg. The biggest needs for them are portable storage units (in addition to a place to stay of course).
When Moore, OK got hit a few years back, they still had the infastructure from the rest of the city in place. Not so for this community.
Oh yeah… it would be an EF5 tornado, not cat 5. The category nomenclature is for hurricanes. Although, I suppose you could create something similar to a cat 5 tornado if you’d wave some standard networking cable around real fast… 🙂
Don’t be a smart ass about this, I’ve lived through two of these and there isn’t anything you can do to save your stuff or your family. In my case it was just luck that I wasn’t killed. My car and house was though. The town looked like the above one, just not as wide an area.
I lived in a new/brick well built for the area house. There was a pile of schoolbuses/cars two stories high at what was left of the local high school.
I moved far away after the second one.
That town could have been my home town in Ohio right down to the grain elevator. It would have been completely wiped out as well. Very scary stuff. Another in a long list of reasons I no longer live in the midwest.
It also looks like god didn’t like the church. It didn’t weather the storm very well.
#2 You are so full of it. Do you think there is something that the government could have doen to stop this from happening? Or do you think it is the government’s responsibility to make everything right after it happens?
While driving between Indianapolis and Albuquerque last summer, we shunpiked and drove through Greensburg KS. The town was lovely–lots of trees for that part of the country, well kept houses. We stopped at the “World’s Largest Hand Dug Well” while we were there. You can see the skylight over the well in pictures 11 and 12 (there’s a pickup truck parked next to it), but the green water tower and tourist shop next to the well are destroyed. Sad–it was a nice town.
A local note–one of the 12 people killed was an Albuquerque resident that just happened to be driving through town when the tornado hit.
I wouldn’t be surprised that some Religious Nutjob will seize the oportunity to spread the usual “Blame the gay guy” crap.
Rofl #8 – are they gonna say that gay’s make god angry & he sent down tornados? rofl
#9
most definitely. i’m sure you’ve heard of pat robertson. any sort of disaster he finds some reason (politically or socially motivated) as to why god struck. earthquakes on west coast-gays. katrina-gays and abortion. amish shooting in pennsylvania-pa school decisions to not include intelligent design in text books. should be interesting with kansas though…very small town, most likely conservative…can’t blame schools in kansas…they do include intelligent design in books…but i have faith in pat, he’ll find something
#10
Since being anti brown is the new fad among ultraconservatives chances are that Pat will blame the illegal immigrants because the majority of them are Catholics and according to every Evangelic church everything that doesn’t give them money is Satanic.
Now that I think about it – it wasnt god.
it was the FSM!
Geez guys, you got it all wrong, it was definitely NOT gays or illegals who caused this, nor God nor the MSM.
It was Bill Clinton!
No. 6. — You are correct, the government had not way of preventing it. But the governor has already complained that the state will be hard-pressed to help quickly because all the national Guard equipment is in Iraq.
I don’t think anyone believes the government should make “everything” right. But when the government has the ability to help, it should help relieve this kind of misery.
Bu that’s going to be hard with all the National Guard equipment tied up in a foreign country.
Those good people will prbably get the best help they can get from their own neighbors. That’s the way we do it in Florida after hurricanes. Neighbors help neighbors.
thanks everyone for making a joke out of this, that helps so very much.
and tallwookie there is nothing wrong with you that a good ass kicking wouldn’t take care of.
Heartbreaking. I’ve been in tornado alley since born, and I’ve seen way too many a tornado live and up close. I’ve been extremely fortunate not to have any blow me up. Survived: F5 in Waco-1953, F3-4-Dallas-1957, lots of others that were miles away, but the last F2 nearly got me, downtown Ft. Worth 2000. I don’t know what’s worse – being shot at or hearing the ‘train’. Bless the folks in Greensburg.
http://www.fortwortharchitecture.com/tornado.htm
#15
I’m not joking, everytime a tornado or a hurricane tears down a town a Bible thumper pops in and starts yapping this kind of sh*t.
Aaaaand their national guard is still trying to pacify a country we invaded and conquered, so there’s no help from their own military forces which they paid for.
As for the “it isn’t government’s job to do this, they suck at it anyway” argument; i got into this with Pournelle after New Orleans. The government didn’t suck at disaster relief until a group of people who hated government got into office and replaced the compentent civil employees with racing association presidents. people who have nothing but contempt for government CANNOT GOVERN. They think government is a scam, they believe it down to their genes. When they get to run a government, they deliberately start looting and putting cronies into critical positions. They think that’s what government does anyway, so they decide to get some of that loot. Civil service, duty to the people, these are scams to them. They are corrupt to the core.
Government exists for the very purpose of helping those among us who have had their lives destroyed, who have no resources and no money, standing in the wreckage strewn with the bodies of their families. Charity can’t hack it. Your neighbors down the street can’t hack it, because they’re ruined as well. It requires heavy machinery and thousands of men and millions of dollars in raw cash that Bob’s Episcopal Church can’t provide.
Survivors still standing in the streets. Maybe we’ll let them stew in their own filth for a few days, then round them up and forcibly bus them to Las Vegas or Houston. And we’ll take their dogs and cats away from their crying kids and kill them. I’m still somehow more infuriated about that hicktown slaughter of the pets than almost anything else about the murder of New Orleans.
I’m volunteering in Greensburg now and the cleanup of lots is progressing each day. I’m just one person and I’m cleaning about 1-2 lots per day. I’m maintaining a photo journal of my activities online to help folks get a better picture of how the rebuilding of Greensburg is progressing. It’s updated every day.
The comments about Phelps (the “god hates f****” guy) are amusing. The truth is, we’re all too busy cleaning and rebuilding down here to even pay attention. Religious wackos are forgotten in history; what really matters is the people making a positive difference!
This is not funny at all. anybody who makes jokes about this is an asshole and is insulting anybody from greensburg.
Hey Tallwookie & Asundried Others,
I live in Kansas, not far from Greensburg actually, and as such I felt compelled to make a few statements in response to the above messages.
To begin with, unfortunately the Greensburg tornado was an EF-5 (Enhanced Fujita Scale)…the first in history to be catagorized thus by the new system. This is the highest rating on the scale for a tornado, and it means winds in excess of 200 mph. Ever had a grain of sand hit you in the face at that speed? You get my point I’m sure.
The grain elevator survived because it was an unexplainable fluke, common in storms of this kind. Also, there is NO building code for an EF-5 tornado! (or an EF-4 or EF-3)
This event was devestating emotionally, physically, and financially. Not just for Greensburg and the towns and counties farther along this storms’ deadly path, but for the entire state. There were 19 tornadoes reported across the state that day, all spawned from the same storm system.
I’m bothered by the fact that Tallwookie found something to laugh at in those pictures. 12 human beings lost thir lives in this storm. The jokes and politics have no place in reference to this disaster.
This terrible event happened just 7 months ago, and Greensburg has been virtually wiped off the map. It is simply GONE! It is still an open wound for many of those affected by this tragedy. It may not be a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but it matters to us. Have a heart ya’ll, and show some respect.
Well said NativeKansun-
I am from Greensburg, Graduated High School at the High School that has since been demoed, and was visiting family the night the Tornado hit. If you ever live to tell about surviving something like that, you will never find humor in it. It wasn’t God who sent the Tornado, but considering the innumerable miracles of survival, I give all the credit to HIM that I and my babies are alive. I can’t say for sure if it was Satan who sent the EF5, but the Bar and the Liquor store survived as well as the court house. (there’s some humor)Greensburg residents have the highest regard for our government and the volunteers from Kansas and all of our other states, who did more for us than we ever could have hoped for. Please don’t make it a gay or racist or political or religious issue. Thank who you will that you are alive if you survive something like this, and get therapy if you need to, because nothing short of going down into the ocean at 300+ miles an hour on a 737 could even compare to what we went through. And one does not look at life the same after that.
It’s such a shame with all these latest catastrophes that have been destroying around our country. I pray to God to present peace to all of the victims and help them by way of this dark time.