They know what it’s like to climb out of the basement on a pitch-black night after the storm has passed to find loved ones, friends and neighbors killed or injured…to find homes, businesses – even trees – gone.
That’s why members of the Udall Community Historical Society are heading to Greensburg this weekend to plant trees. Along with Westar Energy’s Green Team, they will arrive Saturday in the Kiowa County town that was virtually destroyed by a tornado last year.
Udall was struck by an F-5 tornado shortly after 10:30 p.m. on May 25, 1955. The tornado killed 82 people and remains the deadliest twister in Kansas history.
Udall municipal court clerk Norma Ciskowski’s husband survived the Udall tornado.
“He was very lucky – his was one of the few families that didn’t have somebody killed,” Ciskowski said. “There were maybe three other families in all of Udall that didn’t lose a loved one.”
There wasn’t another tornado like it in Kansas – until May 4, 2007, when an even larger tornado struck Greensburg just before 10 p.m., killing 11 people and injuring 59 others in the town.
“When Greensburg was hit, it just kind of brought back memories of what we went through here,” Ciskowski said. “We went through some pictures and compared them. It was interesting. It just looked the same” in Greensburg as it had in Udall.
Udall residents remembered how much they missed the trees that once grew so thickly their branches formed canopies over city streets. That’s why they’re bringing trees to Greensburg, where the destruction was so sweeping that emergency responders later told me that driving into what was left of the town was like being teleported to the moon: rugged terrain and vast expanses of emptiness cloaked in utter darkness.
If anyone can relate to what Greensburg’s going through, it’s the survivors of the Udall tornado. For me, it makes their gesture particularly poignant.