God, I hope those people know how incredibly blessed they are.

I wrote the following on May 7, 2007. Today is May 6, 2024, and I am currently sitting in a tornado safe room. I wrote this and posted it on Facebook 17 years ago tomorrow. I will never forget what happened the night that an EF-5 tornado wiped a small town near my hometown completely off the map. According to one guy I know: "The good Lord gives and the good Lord takes away. Who knows why it happened on that faithful day."

May 7, 2007

Another edit: I drove home the Sunday after the Greensburg Tornado happened back in May. I had to stay in Wichita Sunday night because of baad weather, and I left again early Monday morning. I still have that feeling in me, and I'll never forget it.

It's worse than putting your old dog to sleep. Worse than a fight with a best friend or boy (or both). Worse than being homesick. It's like your heart literally aches, and there's no cure, nothing that remotely even helps ease the pain.

I still cry when I think about Greensburg. At first, I couldn't figure out what makes me cry. Driving through the tornado-ravaged country doesn't. Reading about lost and injured animals does. Reading about a person's life-threatening injuries doesn't. Looking at people holding hands, praying in the parking lot does. News reports don't. Articles don't. Some pictures do. People do. Talking about it doesn't. Thinking about it does. Thinking about the pain that I still feel does. I can't imagine a day when that'll subside.

-

I left Wichita at 5 o'clock this morning. I decided to stay there last night because the thunderstorms out west were producing hail, and that hail busted my dad's windshield on his work truck.

I decided that'd be no fun, driving with no windshield in the rain.

So I left Wichita this morning. Well, let me back up. As soon as I laid down last night- to watch Desperate Housewives- I fell asleep. I woke up around 1 this morning. Around 3:30 or so I decided I was awake, not really doing anything productive, so I decided to leave.

So I got my things ready. As I was holding all of my bags and stuff, I saw this flash of light, and felt thunder shake the place I was staying at. Then tornado sirens went off.

Um...they don't teach you what to do about that in college. :-S It was then said that the sirens were a false alarm. Phew.

I left around 5 this morning, as I already said. Anyway, my plan was to go to Haviland, then go North to Lewis. There was an asphalt road my Dad told me to take (I don't like dirt roads, especially with so much rain).

Along the way, you would not believe the devastation. Trees were laying on their side, and I'm not just talking about trees snapping. The roots and the tree were in tact, and there were huge holes in the ground were the roots once were. More impressively, there were little houses tucked away beyond those trees that were untouched.

I just kept thinking, God, I hope those people know how incredibly blessed they are.

Then, as I veered left, I saw more debris. There was a house on that corner, or what was left of a house. There was no roof, and the left side of the house was gone; I'm guessing that was the debris that was in the ditch.

You see it on tv, and you think shucks, that really sucks for those poor people. But to see a house, or what was once a house, like that in person, is just so incredibly mind-numbing..

The plan to take that road was all good and dandy for about 15 minutes, then I came across a small lake covering the road. Could I have made it across? My Dad thinks so, if I was "Going 80 or something."

And, um, in case you didn't know this, I have a mild issue with water. I'M SO AFRAID OF IT! Needless to say, I turned around and went back to Haviland. Oh, did I mention there was no cell phone service? So if I would have gotten stuck, I would have been walking aimlessly around trying to find somebody to help me when they probably have better things to do.

Hm.

I signaled a guy over that was directing traffic and told him I was heading west, and I asked which way was the safest to go. He told me there was no safe way to go from Haviland. He re-routed me back to Pratt.

Wow. There was no safe way to go? That sounds really strange when you actually hear it come out of a person's mouth. :-(

And you wouldn't believe all the emergency vehicles I saw. I was in Haviland at 8 this morning, and I just kept seeing lines and lines of power trucks, ambulances, police cars, fire trucks, disaster relief trucks, red cross trucks, insurance people, trucks carrying phone poles, garbage trucks, the list just goes on and on.

So I went back to Pratt. I went to Wal-Mart to buy a map and a drink. The guy in front of me was from Greensburg, and was buying jeans and boots. He said everything in his basement was in tact Friday night, but with the mandatory evacuation he had to leave, and everything in his basement got wet from the second set of storms and was since ruined.

He literally didn't have anything. The lady he was with bought his stuff, I'm assuming it was his sister. Everybody who walked into Wal-Mart looked at them and immediately asked, "You ok? Everyone you know ok? Do you have a house left? Have you heard from so and so?"

He was okay. Everyone he knew was okay. His son (or daughter, I don't remember) was in the Pratt hospital with a broken leg.

There were signs at the check out telling customers if they were going to use aid from the red cross (or another organization, I don't remember which one), they were to tell the cashier before they scanned the items.

Wow. Federal aid? That's something you see on tv. That's something you'd expect to see/hear coming out of New Orleans post-Katrina. Not something you'd see in Kansas.

There were disaster relief trucks sitting in the Wal-Mart parking lot. There were people out in the middle of the parking lot holding hands and praying.

After I left Pratt, I turned north and headed to Saint John, with a map in hand just in case. Macksville was flooded, but we drove in the middle turning lane, so it wasn't terrible. I told my Dad I could actually see the road beneath the water, and by Haviland I couldn't.

Macksville wasn't as bad as Haviland, but there were still downed power lines, fields that are now lakes, and trees and tree limbs everywhere. I read somewhere online that the trees look like the trees at the Bulter County Lake.

They were right. And you know those huge, um, things in fields that water the, um, fields? (Not a farmer here, sorry). They were all laying on their sides.

So that's my story. It took me over five and a half hours to get from Wichita to Dodge. I'm not complaining, though. It's unbelievable to think, no, know that an F-5 tornado touched down just miles from where I was, home, friends and family.

My dad has a co-worker in Greensburg that lost everything. When I talked to my dad briefly yesterday afternoon, that co-worker was beside him in Greensburg working.

And I think that says it all right there.

--

I'm editing this because 1) I can't sleep and 2) I can't stop thinking about this.

You can stop reading if you're sick of hearing about this. But I'm not.

It's weird. That Friday night, the check-out time was 6 p.m. for the dorms in Winfield. Everybody had to be out by then. I had to work for graudation, so I stayed. Plus, I took a friend to the airport late Friday night.

I spent Friday playing around Wichita with that friend. I wasn't very happy with the idea at first, but we had a fun time, saw a good movie and ate at a new restaurant.

I called my parents at 9:30 to ask them to bring a vacuum with them the next day, because they were going to help me pack and move all my stuff from Winfield to Dodge.

My Mom didn't talk much. I could tell she was upset. I remember telling me friend that I couldn't think of anything I'd done recently to make her so upset (lol..).

As I was driving back to Winfield around midnight that night, my parents called me back and told me what happened.

Woah.

There was no tv reports then, because all was dark and traffic was, you know, traffic. The next day, my Dad came and moved my stuff, including my tv, and such. We went out to eat, and I took him on a tour of the great city of Winfield (ha, ha).

This was that Saturday afternoon, and I still hadn't seen daylight images of Greensburg. So my Dad and I went up to the third floor of Cole Hall and watched the images of Greensburg on tv.

My aunt called in the midst of this. My Dad had told me earlier that my aunt had gone to Greensburg right after it happened to help with the animals running around. (She works for the animals shelter in Dodge.)

I couldn't understand a word she said, she was so upset.

(I'll never forget that feeling at that particular moment. I was talking to my aunt, well actually I was just listening to her cry, and I looked up at my Dad. I've never seen that look on his face before. We hugged after I got off the phone, and I just started bawling.)

Later, she would tell me of how they had to put a horse down, because all of its legs were broken. After I talked to her, my Dad left, and I went about and worked.

That night, as I was sitting in my dorm room television-less, a single thought ran through my head. It was late, and I had gone through a long day. I thought- If I had left Winfield at 6 p.m. Friday, the deadline for checking out at the dorms, I'd hate to think where I would have been around 9:30-9:45ish.

I've driven home on a Friday night before, and it takes about 4 hours.

If I would have left Friday at 6 p.m., I would have been in the vicinity of Greensburg around 9:30ish.

And then I cried.

A lot.

I've been crying since then. Every since I've told family and friends that, I can't describe it. Everything's just been a little bit different.

Hugs and kisses tend to last a little longer then they did before.

The Monday after that, I went down to the animal shelter to visit with my aunt. She showed me all the animals they rescued from Greensburg and Great Bend. Most of the dogs got taken to Pratt, and Dodge took the cats.

Some cages were marked in red- those were the animals that bit people while being rescued. Most of those animals were just momma cats trying to protect their babies.

I held one kitten. Now, I normally don't like cats, but this little thing was adorable. My aunt kept saying, "Monica, God knows that those animals saw and went throught that night."

And that little kitten, as soon as I quit petting it or facing it, it would slap me across the nose with its paw. :-)

I stayed there a long time that afternoon. I don't even know why. Maybe I just wanted to let those little cats and kittens know that there was someone in the world who would hold them and pet them and tell them everything was going to be all right.

My aunt pointed out a few things to me and told me stories that I'll never forget. She said most of the pets will never be claimed.

She also said one of the vets came over to her in Greensburg that night to perform surgery on a cat, right in the middle of the rubble. She said the doctor was so relieved to find an animal alive, he wanted to do anything to save it.

When I moved to Oklahoma, I had to again drive through the tornado damage to get here. I still can't quite describe that feeling.. One thing that is sort of comforting, though, is that Oklahoma City understands that feeling. Greensburg was the first F-5 tornado since the Moore tornado in 1999, which killed 44 people. That, and the bombing, and you kind of get the idea that people here understand pain.

I drove through Greensburg at least a dozen times this year. I drove through the weekend before my birthday, which was three weeks before the tornado happened.

I keep trying to picture what the town looked like.

I can't.

I have one memory of Greensburg, and that's the one stop light in town. I drove home from Wichita my freshman year of college, and I drove home in bad weather. I tried stopping at that stop light, and I did an impressive 360 on the ice. The semi behind me did the same thing. The guy at the gas station looked at me and laughed.

And that gas station is literally the only thing I remember about a town that no longer exists.

I wrote a story last year for the Globe about Greensburg's Big Well-come celebration. I printed it off and I have it on my fridge now.

I imagine it's going to be there for a long time to come.

From my story last summer-
"We just want to welcome everyone around the area to come to Greensburg," said Darin Headrick, president of the Greensburg Chamber of Commerce. "There's something for everyone. It should be a nice, fun day."