Jessica Minor, who grew up in Coldwater, contacted friends in nearby Greensburg who shared their experiences from Friday night’s tornado.

By Jessica Minor

Special to the Journal-World

Haley and Peter Ken moved to Greensburg with their baby daughter McKenna last year.

They said they purchased a real “fixer-upper” and turned it into their home.

On Friday night, they lost it all in the tornado that ravaged their town.

The Kerns did not have a basement, so they headed to a neighbor’s home. Sirens sounded about 20 minutes before Greensburg was hit. The tornado came from the west and hit first on that side of town, where the Kerns live.

After the tornado had passed and they were able to come up from the basement, they saw that their house was gone. Peter’s pickup was in his daughter’s bedroom and their bed was in a tree. Haley’s brand new Explorer was fine.

The Kerns – Peter, a high school tech/shop teacher, and Haley, a home daycare operator – are living with family in nearby Pratt.

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Jamie Brown, a Kiowa County volunteer firefighter, and a friend were working spinning records at a dance in Coldwater when the tornado hit Greensburg 20 miles to the north.

His friend, a part-time sheriff’s deputy in Kiowa County, called dispatch to see what was going on. Brown said his friend was able to speak to dispatch for only a minute before the office walls caved in.

The two men hit the road and were able to make it to Parkin’s Hill 14 miles outside Coldwater on Highway 183. Cars blocked the road and they were told they couldn’t get through because of downed power lines and debris. Brown and his friend took back roads and used four-wheel drive to make it to Greensburg.

They arrived on the south side of town and were immediately put to work. They began by pulling one man, who they originally believed to be dead, out of a house. They secured him on a stray front door and loaded him onto the back of their flatbed truck. The man was transported to what was left of the local Dillons, which had been set up as a triage.

Up to 400 victims went through the Dillons parking lot that night. Brown estimated 80 of those were sent to hospitals, about 15 with serious injuries. The rest were loaded onto school buses from nearby towns and sent to shelters in Haviland and Mullinville.

Brown, 25, believes Greensburg will be rebuilt. “One of two things will happen,” he said. “It will either be rebuilt to 70 percent of its original size, or it will be rebuilt to 120 percent of its original size. There is still a power plant that needs workers, and we are still the county seat. People are needed to work those jobs, and they will need houses.”

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When Coldwater resident Tonia Gerstner found out about the tornado Friday, she and her father wanted to help.

So they headed north.

About 10 miles outside Greensburg on Highway 183, they ran into downed power lines, which forced them to take back roads the rest of the way into town. As they were driving, Gerstner, 25, was amazed by the way the wheat looked as if it had already been cut.

Once in town, they stopped at KDOT, which was one of the few buildings still standing on the east end of town. This is where a command post had been set up.

Gerstner said they waited for someone to give them direction about what to do. Then she spotted two friends from Coldwater, both volunteer firefighters from Comanche County, driving bulldozers and clearing debris from roads.

The most surprising sight that night may have been the local bar that was being used as a morgue. She also couldn’t believe the noise. Between the wind, generators and shouting, she said, you couldn’t hear anything.

Gerstner and her father returned home around 5:30 a.m.

“After seeing what I saw, I will never head for the basement again if a tornado is near. That is the last place I want to be.”

– Jessica Minor, a teacher at Langston Hughes School, is a member of the Citizen Journalism Academy sponsored by The World Company and Kansas University’s William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications.