Tornadoes shape towns’ past and future

The house wasn’t a total loss, but it was more than a year before he was able to move back in. Though some lots in his neighborhood remain empty, most are now filled with new or fixed-up homes. And after his neighbors helped him through the rebuilding process, Parks scrapped plans to move to the Oklahoma City area.

“It’s home,” said Parks, now a Woodward firefighter. “I don’t know anywhere else where people would help me like that.”

Talk to folks in Greensburg, and you hear similar stories of the recovery process strengthening already tight connections between friends and neighbors. But Dixson suggests that before rebuilding begins in earnest, residents should commit to a vision for a city’s future that can be sustained after construction ends.

“I caution other communities, don’t make life decisions rapidly,” the Kansas mayor said. “When you get past the initial rush of building the buildings, you tend to lean back a little. That’s the challenge, I think, at this point: To not just try to survive, to continue to be a thriving community.”

For a time, Greensburg’s sustainable recovery plan made the city a darling of Washington, D.C., and television. The idea of a country town in west-central Kansas rising from the rubble to become a hub of the environmental movement resonated with people. It also didn’t hurt that the city’s name started with “Green.”

Bush, who spoke outside Hardinger’s teetering home about a week after the storm, returned almost a year later to deliver the high school’s commencement address. Cable TV crews filmed a reality series about Greensburg. And Mayor Dixson, a registered Republican from a county where John McCain won 80 percent of the votes in 2008, was a guest of honor at President Barack Obama’s address to a joint session of Congress in 2009.

Greensburg had an army of volunteers, along with donated money and federal funding. Beautiful new buildings sprouted from the dirt. The town’s showcase Big Well Museum, which locals proudly note is among the Eight Wonders of Kansas, eventually reopened. And residents like Scott Eller, a Greensburg native who has worked in the oil industry, proselytized to skeptics about the merits of rebuilding sustainably.

“Our green initiative, I think, really, really went very well,” said Eller, who admits he was initially against the idea but came around after reading up on eco-friendly living. “We had a lot of outside money coming in because of that.”

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