The optimism and enthusiasm shown last week in Greensburg was an inspiration. Despite the destruction of their town by a tornado on May 4, residents and city leaders spoke during a community meeting about opportunities — to make Greensburg a model community by rebuilding using environmentally friendly standards, to improve city infrastructure, to equip public school classrooms with state-of-the-art technology. The road to full recovery will be long and frustrating at times. But Greensburg residents are demonstrating the power of hope.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
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17 Comments
Shows what can be done when you are not dealing with a community that is primarily welfare.
These people did not sit back and wait for someone to help them. The jumped right in and started working.
Its call being a “Community” something we tend to lose in the rush.
Remember, in only four more months, generally in May, tornado season will return to Kansas. Will Greensburg and the rest of Kansas be ready?
The place is dead. Was dead, always will be dead.
I went out there in November to visit a relative whose home was spared, and although a large percentage of the citizens are in the city limits (FEMAville) many of them are going to be unable to rebuild because they are underinsured. Many of them are elderly, and lack the energy. Alco has already said they would not come back. Although Kroger has said they would rebuild the Dillons store, they are not presently doing anything towards fulfilling that commitment. There are virtually no houses for sale in any of the surrounding communities because many people simply took the insurance money and left town. Pratt is an excellent example of this.Greensburg will never recover from this. There are some who will rebuild, but the town will never approach being half of what it once was.
Brown: Being from Pratt, I recall Greensburg pretty well prior to the tornado. In fact the summer previous to the tornado, I visited Greensburg. I walked up and down their Main Street and drove around town a little … marveled at their clean wide streets, shade trees and busy little rural main street.
Didn’t visit the “World’s Deepest Handdug Well” on that trip. I had visited the well a few years before. I bought the ticket to walk down the shaky steel stairwell to the water level near the bottom and probably threw in some pocket change to bring luck to Greensburg and myself!
In fact the “handdug well” made famous by Ripleys “Believe It or Not” was built to reach a dependable source of water for the railroad and for the municipal water supply.
Greensburg has several things going for it. It is surrounded by vast wheat fields. Highway 54, a cross-country two-lane highway from Chicago via Wichita to El Paso passes through town. Also the old Rock Island Railroad, now with another name, an important transcontinental railroad crosses the town. Back in the 1950’s, this railroad carried movie stars from Los Angelos, via El Paso through Kansas to Chicago.
But as you said, and so I have been told, a lot of Greensburg citizens have taken their insurance checks and moved on to Pratt with its super Wal-Mart and other towns to resume their lives without the headaches of dealing with the government and shyster contractors.
Highway 54 has always passed through Greensburg crossing Greensburg’s north-south Main Street at ground level. Might be a stop and go light there but more likely stop signs, I can’t remember. But now, the government wants to build a concrete overpass, a “fly-over,” and limited access highway through Greensburg … which will cost taxpayers of Kansas millions of wasted tax dollars.
Wichita’s on-grade Maple and West Street intersection carries more traffic in an hour than Highway 54 carries through Greensburg.
“Greening” Greensburg might include building an ethanol plant there. Frankly this is NOT greening the area, it would hasten returning Greensburg, Pratt and even Wichita to the “Great American Desert” by creating air pollution (ask the citizens of Colwich) and robbing Kansans of the relatively pristine sparkling waters in our Ogallala underground aquifer. The Ogallala furnishes the so far, always flowing water in the north-south branches of the Ninnescah River that begin in Pratt County and the Chickaskia River that begins in a jumble of Budweiser beer kegs near the fabled little Catholic community of St. Leo, south of Cunningham.
Incidentally, to be fair to Krogers/Dillons … I don’t believe they have said they would rebuild the Dillons store that was on Highway 54, a few blocks east of downtown Greensburg. I believe their somewhat independent subsidiary, Kwik Shop stores, said they would rebuild their convenience store in Greensburg. Don’t know the status of that.
I think the big question should have been asked and pondered after a decent interval of time, say now … without cheerleading by outsiders … should Greensburg be rebuilt or should the citizens be encouraged to move to surrounding towns and villages, many of which are gradually losing population as young people leave for greener pastures.
The Dillons/Kwik shop is a new prototype for small comunities. After all, until there are people to shop there what they are doing is great.
As the community grows, The store will expand to meet the Community needs.
The Kwik Shop has been rebuilt. It is basically the only place in Greensburg where you can spend any money. The junction of Main St. and US 54 for years had a stop light. The light was destroyed by the storm and now it has been converted to a 4-way stop. The east-west stop signs (54 hwy) are illuminated at night by portable lighting (gasoline powered generators) because it is so dark there. If it wasn’t for the Kwik Shop being lit up like an outhouse in the fog, you would never know you were in town. When I was there in mid November, they were still stringing up electrical wires, as some of the new houses that had been built or moved in had no power to them. It was their goal to have all occupied housing powered by Thanksgiving. I don’t know why they are not installing underground utilities.
Brown: Where is the Kwik Shop from say the Main Street/Highway 54 intersection?
Is it bigger than ordinary Kwik Shops? Does it have tables for coffee drinkers and fast food consumption? Does it sell some regular groceries that you would find in a Dillon’s store?
It has been proposed to build an overpass to carry Highway 54 traffic OVER Greensburg seems ludicrous to me and I suspect to many Greensburg citizens. I could see routing it a few blocks north or south but truckers bring business to a town. And some businesses are or were along the old route of Highway 54.
Highway 54 does carry medium traffic but not near as much as say West Street and Central in Wichita.
Kwik Shop is 1 block E of Main St on US 54. It is a large store for that size of town, but not any larger than you would find in Wichita. It has some grocery items, including fresh meat, but I don’t remember seeing any tables for customers.
They are considering running US 54 next to the co-op elevator, just a few blocks north of where it is now. My cousins son, who is a senior at GHS, and also works at the elevator, has attended the meeting of the KDOT proposal and has pointed out to the KDOT engineers things they have not considered, such as congestion near the elevator at harvest time, and how this congestion could be dangerous near a major highway. They hadn’t considered this as being a problem, but acknowledged that it could be.
This goes to show what happens when you let college boys with their fancy educations decide how things are done with little input from the locals. The “greening” that you hear so much about is running many people away because of the cost. My relatives in the area say they believe the town will never be what it was. Ever. This is too bad, as I have been to this town often during my life and almost consider it a second hometown.
Make that 1 block west on main st. Sorry.
Make that 1 block west of main st. Sorry.
Will the new town have the internet? Cell service?
And running water, electic power, natural gas and cable TV by now? Serious question … I don’t know the status of these services.
I have an Alltel cell phone and had maximum signal strength at all points in town.
I doubt if many will read this thread since it is now quite aways down. But I did ask someone in the know about the Kwik Shop in Greensburg, a subsidiary of Dillons/Kroger. (Note: This is not Quik Trip, a different company.)
Apparently Kwik Shop is open and doing business in Greensburg as a blogger mentioned above, at a location about a block west of Main Street on Highway 54.
Apparently Kwik Shop is planning to expand that location to a larger configuration to be kind of cross between a convenience store and grocery store. At this point, Dillons does not plan to rebuild their former grocery store because they would in effect be competing against themselves.
So I say congratulations Dillons/Kwik Shop for providing the basic source for gasoline, groceries and supplies in Greensburg.