Although she was told that the situation was under control, Midge Grinstead, the executive director of the Lawrence Humane Society, knew that the available volunteers from the nearby towns of Pratt, Wichita and Dodge City could not possibly handle the load by themselves. Based on the human population numbers alone, she figured that probably 800 pets had been living in Greensburg before the F5 tornado ripped through it.

It took little time to phone some Lawrence businesses and, willing as always, Orscheln’s, Petco, Pur-O-Zone and Wal-Mart stepped up with cages, bowls and paper towels. Clinton Parkway Animal Hospital provided veterinary supply samples, and Hill’s Pet Nutrition delivered loads of pet food not only to Greensburg but also to Dodge City and Garden City, where many of the animals would be cared for.

And in no time Grinstead, her husband Mark, and staff member Jeaneen Hercha loaded up the Grinstead camper and hit the road to see how they could help.

It was like nothing they had ever seen.

“Some areas were just holes in the ground that were basements,” Midge Grinstead said. “The devastation was just unbelievable.”

The volunteers who already had arrived to work with the animals were overjoyed for the assistance – they were inundated, and the veterinarians in nearby towns were going to heroic lengths to save the wounded. The makeshift humane society was simply a large Kansas Department of Transportation shed – three walls and a roof, with heavy road equipment still in place.

The volunteers parked their vehicles to cordon off the area, and then began the routine business of animal care: cleaning kennels and rearranging them. They started with about 30 dogs and 20 cats, but unlike most shelters, this collection included livestock. They had calves, lambs, ducks, geese, chickens and goats. Someone had found a tortoise; they made room for a python and a bunny. Horses and cows, fortunately, were being cared for in a different part of town.

Then came the paperwork: loss reports, found reports and reports for the state, which asked that all animals be logged in and photographed. The shed started filling, and soon the crew was caring for about 60 dogs and 80 cats.

And the people started coming. Some dropped off animals they’d found wandering; others, frantic and crying, were looking for their beloved family members. They kept returning, four and five and six times a day, to see if anyone else had been brought in. Relatives came to claim the companions of folks who had no homes left. Those who simply wanted their pets with them had no supplies to take care of them; the volunteers sent them away with cages, bowls and bags of food so all the family members could stay together, wherever they landed. Having already lost so much, the people of Greensburg simply could not bear the thought of being separated from their pets, too.

At the shelter, the reunions were more joyous than anything the volunteers had ever seen; the reports of “I’m sorry, nothing yet” went far beyond devastating.

Some scenes from Greensburg:

l One couple in their early 80s came looking for Freckles, their part-cocker spaniel with dots on his nose. It was raining, Grinstead said, and the couple wore trash bags to stay dry because they no longer had raincoats. Both were bruised and cut from having been buried in their house, and the man had a deep gash on his head, but all that mattered was that Freckles was still missing, five days after the storm. Grinstead went with them to the remains of their home, and together they began digging through the rubble to see if they could find any sign of their friend. In the remains of the living room, the man found their sofa overturned, spine up. He flipped it over, and there underneath was a wagging tail and a spotted nose.

“Freckles just wouldn’t stop kissing them,” Grinstead said. “I just started bawling right along with them.”

l A gentleman came in looking for his Siamese cat. He had lost his wife a number of years earlier, he explained, and they had owned the cat together. When the tornado hit, the cat had jumped out of his arms and run off. He had lost his wife, and now his home; “I just can’t lose my cat, too,” he said. So on Wednesday morning, Grinstead helped him set a trap in his back yard on top of a refrigerator that smelled strongly of rotting food, assuming the cat would come around looking for a meal. The Siamese had not taken the bait on Thursday, when Grinstead returned to Lawrence, but on Friday morning she received a call from state worker Deb Duncan, who said that she was standing next to a man who was holding a Siamese cat and insisting that Grinstead be phoned with the good news.

l One family’s three Weimaraners had been found over the course of several days; volunteers had bandaged the wounded feet of two of them and housed them together in one cage. The father didn’t care about fit when he identified them; he crawled right in with them for a long, wiggly and cramped reunion. The following day a neighbor found their fourth dog, a border collie, bound in wire and pinned beneath the garage roof. They untangled him and raced him to the vet; on last report, he was doing just fine.

And still the rescue and care goes on. Grinstead and her husband, along with staff member Laura Smith, are back in the Greensburg area, helping set up a new shelter building donated through the incredible generosity of Kansas-born actress Kirstie Alley.

If you’d like to help, too, please send donations, clearly marked “Greensburg,” to the Lawrence Humane Society, PO Box 651, Lawrence 66044. You can help bring good to an area devastated by tragedy.