Finished my field engineering work. Time to start the 4 hour drive home. It's not on the way, but 30 miles away is Greensburg, Kansas. The town that used to be. On a fateful night in May 2007 a huge tornado changed its history by wiping it out. This is the first time I've been anywhere close to it and probably won't be around here again anytime soon. So I drive over. I've lived most my life in Kansas. You learn trees that have survived a large tornado have a certain 'look' to them for many years. They are silent sentinels trying to tell everyone the horrors they saw yet they can't speak. Every tree in Greensburg was that way. Very spooky. I drove around, looking for a scene that I could respectfully draw and not encroach on private property. I found this scene that I could draw from the car. The house address had been painted on the curb in recent years, contrasting with the total destruction of house. The town is slowly rebuilding.
The city of Chapman was about wiped out by a tornado this past summer. One of the new houses there will be featured in an upcoming sweep week 2-hour edition of Extreme Makeover, Home Edition. Hope the national attention will help the little town is some way.
4 comments:
Very nice! Enjoyed looking & reading through your recent journal entries. Hope things went well on your solo excursion with the REA guy.
For you to speak for the trees with your sketch speaks highly of you.
I live in Greensburg, and we had such beautiful trees... there are only a fraction of them left, as most of them were destroyed completely... we really miss our trees...
interesting post,,,,,wasn't Greensburg the town in KS that got hit twice by tornados -- one year and then again the next year? at any rate,,,,i do remember the stories and how everything was wiped out.....and you are right about the trees. we have the same look to a lot of ours in Springfield MO after the 2007 ice storm....they take a long time to recover..makes my heart sick to see them.
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