President Bush’s visit to Greensburg on Wednesday might have temporarily restored cell phone service for people working in an area decimated Friday night by an EF-5 tornado.
Emporian Kathy Johnson said that Wednesday was the first day she had reliable cell-phone service since she and her husband, Dave, went to Greensburg to help her family recover their belongings and clear away debris from their homes. Johnson’s brothers, nephews and niece lost four homes in the tornado.
She thought perhaps the additional communications equipment brought in for the presidential visit boosted the weak signals that had been available before Wednesday. Whatever the cause, she was glad to be able to call friends and family in Emporia and tell them the reality of what’s happened in Greensburg.
“It’s so much worse here than it is on TV,” Johnson said. “... It’s hard to know where to go first. It’s overwhelming. I don’t know where to begin.”
There is nothing left worth using in rebuilding the town, she said, though insurance claims representatives have told several homeowners that some walls still standing can be used as part of the new construction. Johnson said she was skeptical of that information.
She said that signs seem to have been posted on all of the buildings around town.
“They say ‘Warning, enter at your own risk’ and ‘unsafe’ in big bold letters,” Johnson said. The signs also mention serious structural damage and the possibility of serious injury or death for people who enter the buildings.
The families have been going in and out of the buildings since they were allowed back into town earlier this week. She regretted authorities’ decision to delay entrance to residents. The delay caused considerable additional damage because of heavy rains.
“Things that could have been saved weren’t,” she said.
Johnson’s family gathered at one of their homes on Friday night to prepare for a garage sale on Saturday morning. Before the night was over, Greensburg looked like a construction dump site.
Johnson tried to call a brother who is in the telephone business in Greensburg. Though she could not make contact from Emporia, her brother walked about eight blocks, through the debris and downed power lines, to his business, where he managed to rig together a phone that he used to call Johnson to say the family had made it through the storm.
She mentioned to him the hazards of walking under those conditions, in the pitch-black of night.
“He said, ‘Oh no, there was lots of lightning around,’” she said.
A semi-tanker truck landed on her brother’s garage, and the house was destroyed, as were the other homes of family members. Many are staying with a nephew outside town.
The family has been going from one house to the next, trying to sort through the wreckage to find salvageable items. Johnson said that some of the discoveries have seemed bizarre. Surrounded by destruction, with vehicles thrown for blocks and some houses looking like giant Pik-up-Stiks, Johnson said a family member’s china cabinet with its small, fragile contents went untouched by the tornado.
They’ve used backhoes and skid loaders to pile the debris, and are waiting to get final word on how to handle the debris. Some officials tell them to take it away and others say to leave it. It is part of the cloud of confusion that may not lift immediately.
Greensburg residents, however, remain upbeat and optimistic about rebuilding the homes, hospital, schools and businesses that were lost Friday night. They are trying to interject as much normalcy into the clean-up as possible. Graduation for high school seniors will go on and, because of the generosity of others, a full complement of gym shoes, uniforms and other equipment arrived Wednesday for students who were to compete today in a track meet.
Life is going on in Greensburg.
On Monday, the Johnsons were pleasantly surprised to see a group of Emporians who’d taken truckloads of food and water to Greensburg as part of a project undertaken by employees and patrons of Bruff’s Bar and Grill.
“How nice it was to see a familiar face,” she said. “They loaded us up with a bunch of sandwiches, and we brought them back to the crew here.”
On Wednesday, she and the family gave themselves a well-deserved break and went downtown to try to see the president.
“We were waiting at the courthouse for two hours,” she said, adding that they got a glimpse of the presidential motorcade’s two black Suburbans driving past a few blocks away — on the street where a family member lived.
“They drove right by the house,” Johnson said with a rueful laugh. “We should have stayed working.”