Photo Gallery
Greensburg's tornado
Associated Press photographers document the destruction wrought by a tornado Friday, May 4, 2007, in Greensburg.
An Emporia State University student found herself making arrangements for her parents’ safety Friday night as a tornado struck Greensburg.
Crystal Naumann was working at Walburn’s Gym and saw that her hometown was in a tornado watch. She called her parents, Carl and Lori Naumann, who live outside Greensburg.
“I was joking around, ‘You guys still here or did you blow away?’” she said, recalling the conversation. Tornado watches are common across Kansas, and Greensburg residents, like others in the state, tend to go outside and watch the clouds when severe weather is forecast.
Initially, it appeared that the storm would pass on the east side of town, she said. Then the storm became more threatening and it was obvious that Greensburg was going to be struck by a massive tornado.
They had no basement and no close neighbors, and before they lost electricity and phone service, the Naumanns asked their daughter to call a neighbor with a basement to say they were driving over right away and to please leave the door unlocked.
Naumann said she felt terrified that she had lost communication with her parents and the television screen was showing the tornado barreling into the city.
“I was sure they were blown away, because where they were driving was in the path of the tornado,” Naumann said.
She drove to Greensburg Saturday and found her parents safe and their suburban home intact.
Grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins were not all as fortunate, and several of them are staying with Carl and Lori Naumann for the time being. A grandmother and great-aunt were taken to the hospital, but were not seriously injured.
The tornado picked up her grandmother’s trailer and threw it, scattering its contents around the area. The family was able to recover a flag from her grandfather’s military funeral and love letters he’d written to her grandmother were still in the box where they had been stored.
A great-aunt was struck in the head by a board as she was coming upstairs, Naumann said. When the family got into Greensburg, the great-aunt could not be found.
“We found her in Dodge City in the hospital a day later,” Naumann said. “She had her dog with her in the hospital.”
Naumann said that the devastation caused by the tornado seemed far worse than she television cameras were showing.
“They showed what people wanted to see,” she said. The full effect of the tornado and its aftermath were something she herself didn’t want to see.
As she approached the flattened city Saturday, she was appalled at how far she could see.
“It would be like standing out here (at Walburn’s) and being able to look across town and see the Flying J,” Naumann said.
“The trees — there’s trunks as big as cars, like the tornado ripped it out of the ground and threw it.”
Naumann’s childhood has been reduced to memories. The hospital where she was born, the schools she attended, friends and relatives’ homes, parks, businesses — all have been destroyed.
“Everything’s gone,” Naumann said. “My family’s hurting, but we’ll make it.”
Naumann returned to classes and her job on Monday. She plans to take finals today and Wednesday and then return to Greensburg.
In the meantime, Brian and Frannie Walburn have committed to buying 100 T-shirts that will say “God bless Greensburg, 5-4-07.” Naumann will sell the shirts as a fundraiser for her home community.
Friends at ESU are trying to raise $5,000 and are collecting items, such as work gloves, to send back to Greensburg. Naumann said that her family had noticed that the gloves were especially important for everyone working on the clean-up because of the broken glass, nails and other debris.
Naumann’s father, who moves house trailers, has been asked to be in charge of 400 to 500 trailers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to provide homes for Greensburg residents. Crystal Naumann will return home later this month to help in the effort.
She wants her hometown to pull together and rebuild, but she fears that some Greensburg residents will leave because all of the businesses that provided jobs have been destroyed. It’s been a difficult, disruptive few days, and she said she’s having trouble concentrating because she’s been unable to sleep since the tornado struck.
“Your home town’s always your security blanket,” Naumann said. “There’s nothing to come back to now. ... My heart has never felt like this before.”