Word: greensburg
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...Tornado that hit Greensburg on May 4 took its time, rolling up Main Street like it was on a Sunday stroll to church. Ron Shank, owner of the Kansas town's General Motors dealership, hid with his wife beneath a quilt in their basement, but they heard the storm rip their home from its foundations. Marvin George, a pastor at the Baptist church, took shelter in his closet. "We just knelt and prayed," he says. "I wasn't scared until the next morning, when I saw the carnage...
...Greensburg residents were understandably skeptical. Many were still living in the clusters of trailers nicknamed "FEMAvilles," and they were more concerned with getting any kind of roof over their heads than with the quality of its insulation. Federal and state governments would only pay them 85% of the value of a destroyed house, and after all, wasn't "green" for those who could afford it? "There was resistance to change," says Gene West, the county commissioner. "This is a rural area, and a conservative...
...Today Greensburg is living up to its name. Consultants from the Department of Energy and the National Renewable energy Laboratory are helping residents build new houses that are up to 50% more energy efficient than their old homes. The Discovery Channel has spent months documenting the town's reconstruction for a miniseries on the Greensburg experience that will be produced by Leonardo DiCaprio. In early January, the city council approved a plan that would make all public buildings in Greensburg conform to the Platinum rating of the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Design (LEED) standards - something...
...green revolution may not make Greensburg a tourist mecca, but it has become a working model for other towns. "If Greensburg can do it, then green is definitely mainstream," says city administrator Steve Hewitt. "The heart of America now gets...
...Still, green or not, for some Greensburg will never heal. Former mayor Lonnie McCollum, one of the first to raise the idea of building green, quit his post three weeks after the tornado, citing exhaustion, and eventually moved with his wife to the neighboring town of Pratt. On recent Friday, McCollum spoke wistfully of the town in which he had lived his entire life. He can't let Greensburg go, but he can't return, either. "We had a Norman Rockwell existence," the 62-year-old says. "For me, it's completely gone. There's nothing out there...