A grain elevator is left standing among destroyed homes following a late night tornado May 5 in Greensburg. Most of this southwest Kansas town was destroyed by the tornado.

Greensburg ? When a huge tornado flattened Greensburg last month, the twin concrete towers of the Southern Plains Cooperative grain elevator didn’t budge.

Now less than two months later, the co-op is ready for wheat harvest and about “80 percent back to normal,” said Danny McLarty, manager of the Greensburg branch of Southern Plains.

“I’d say it was built to last,” McLarty said of the elevator, which consists of two towers, a larger one built in 1954 and a smaller one built in 1934. “A structural engineer came through to check and said they are both in good shape.”

McLarty, 58 and a 40-year veteran of grain elevator management, said he always considered the elevator to be a storm shelter in any town where he has lived.

With wheat harvest only days away, McLarty is running the business from a temporary trailer powered by a generator.

“We were back in operation about 10 days after the storm,” he said. “We started loading out liquid fertilizer at that time, and we haven’t slowed down since.”

The elevator at Greensburg has the capacity for about 650,000 bushels of grain; branch elevators can hold another 400,000 bushels. He doubts the wheat harvest will strain storage.

The only aspect of the business not up and running Friday was the fuel pumps, and they are expected to be on line by the middle of the week, McLarty said.

“We’re doing our best to make sure that when harvest does finally get rolling we’ll have fuel for our producers,” he said.

On May 4, he was home in Bucklin, watching his computer screen and television to follow the deadly outbreak of storms. When he heard that Greensburg had been hit, he headed into town immediately.

The elevator’s chemical storage shed was destroyed, the office had been lifted off its foundation and the dry fertilizer shed was missing its roof. Three of 14 trucks were usable.

It has been the greatest challenge of his years in the business.

“But we can handle the wheat and the fall crops,” he said.