Greensburg, Kansas Leveled By Tornadoes. (Video)
posted at 3:12 am on May 6, 2007 by see-dubya
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And more on the way. They sounded the sirens with twenty minutes to spare, but when you live in Tornado Alley, you get used to it and don’t always take them as seriously as you should:
Meteorologist Larry Ruthi said the path of damage is 1.4 miles wide.
“I’m in downtown Greensburg. There’s really nothing left,” he said.
Jose Peraza said he was driving his oil rig into town when he heard the tornado warning sirens and pulled over to escape driving hail. He hid with several other people in a convenience store freezer.
He said the storm ripped the side off the freezer and when he came out, the twister had chucked his truck — with 40,000 pounds of oil — “like nothing.”
One of the less-damaged buildings was a beer joint, so they used it for a morgue. As I read the reports at midnight Pacific, eight are known dead in Greensburg, plus a deputy in another town.
Video of the mainstreet devastation here.
Rescue efforts have been called off for the night; they expect that all the injured have been rescued form the wreckage, but expect to find more bodies in the morning. Here’s an AP shot of their tourist attraction, the hand-dug “Big Well”:
I wondered why that piece of sheet metal was round, and then a little more googling and I realized:
Yahoo slideshow here. I’ll update tomorrow when a clear and credible charity emerges; but if you gave some money after Katrina you might want to look those folks up again.
UPDATE: My, that didn’t take long. Slingin’ the hot, mean crazy at DU:
Nice spot, mojojojo.
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And the DUmmies blame it on BOOOSH!!! in 3… 2…
Wow… I didn’t even get to “1.”
mojojojo on May 6, 2007 at 3:17 AM
Thats from DU….and um…the National Guard is already helping in Kansas.
EnochCain on May 6, 2007 at 3:23 AM
mojojojo - you know what else I found in that DU thread? Look:
Can you believe it? It’s like they wanted more people to die.
And you know what else I found (albeit disturbing)? People in the thread were actually “praying” for the victims, but since we all know the Dims are Godless I can only assume those posters were Republicans.
Nonfactor on May 6, 2007 at 3:23 AM
More like praying to Gaea…
EnochCain on May 6, 2007 at 3:25 AM
The liberals will say the cause was global warming of course… which is ridiculous. Tornadoes have always been a common occurrence in Kansas, they don’t call it Tornado Alley for nothing.
Maxx on May 6, 2007 at 3:30 AM
http://www.kansas.com/static/slides/050507tornadoaerials/
Wow
RightWinged on May 6, 2007 at 3:33 AM
Yeah, that excuses the Bush derangement syndrome that is so common among your friends that they couldn’t even leave it out of this.
RightWinged on May 6, 2007 at 3:34 AM
I just put up a screenshot of someone wishing it had gone to Crawford, with the implication of wanting to kill the President. Lovely party you’ve got there, NF.
see-dubya on May 6, 2007 at 3:35 AM
I mean, not that that’s anything new.
see-dubya on May 6, 2007 at 3:50 AM
Because jokes are so hard to understand nowadays, huh?
And as an aside I don’t have an account at DU and the last time I visited the site would have to have been at least 1 year ago. crooksandliars.com, firedoglake.com, and http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/ are the only other political blogs I read regularly.
Nonfactor on May 6, 2007 at 3:55 AM
I mean we’re far from perfect. We may have a lot of stupid fights about whether people were formed out of clay by the primeval Jew-spirit vs. slithering out of some gibbon’s womb, popping upright, and suddenly teaching ourselves to compose Monteverdi’s Vespera della Beata Virgine, BUT when a f*@$ing F5 creams Mayberry we’re not going to dicker around wishing it had taken out Chimperor McHitlerburton instead.
That we preferred that it had hit Tehran may have occurred to us. But they’re our enemies.
see-dubya on May 6, 2007 at 3:58 AM
HuffPo Commenter’s speak:
At least this person claims to feel bad… but am I the only one who didn’t see a trailer in Greensburg? Perhaps there were some, but the entire city (schools, city hall, etc.) were just flattened. There’s a lot of brick.
On that same note, does everyone remember the insanely deadly ones that struck Tennessee last year? I was still living in Nashville and I recall like 20 or 30 being killed in a single day about 25 miles north, with like a dozen more a week earlier in western TN. I may be inverting those numbers, but anyway I just remember watching aerial video over upper class neighborhoods of huge brick homes that each looked like they had been hit with bunker busters. I just couldn’t believe as this chopper kept flying and there was just pile after pile of bricks and crap where large expensive homes once sat.
Anyway, here’s the compassion:
Side note: I wonder if AAnon is aware of the fact that Vermont (where I live), arguably the most liberal place in the country has the second smallest population of all states. We are full of small little hick mountain towns that have a few people to a few hundred.
Wow, ingarose blames this on karma because we apparently inflict torture around the world. And that if we keep building this bad karma, we’ll have more Chos. Wow!
I’m not completely convinced that God necessarily targets places where people have displeased Him.
forebode
There are maybe 2 or 3 sympathetic comments that say they simply feel for these people or something. But the rest are all the exceptions right Nonfactor (and Alan Colmes). It’s so funny that BDS continues to manifest itself day after day, yet everytime it’s dismissed by the MSM, and when it’s discussed on shows like H&C the libs attempt to say “it’s just a fringe few”, but it keeps happening, and they treat every incident like it’s isolated. When does a pattern get recognized as a pattern? Of course Ann Coulter calls John Edwards a fa**ot and the world almost comes to an end.
RightWinged on May 6, 2007 at 4:21 AM
The ill wishes expressed at DU are inexcusable. I find it hard to beleive they have NO problem politicizing a tornado. Well I guess they have determined it to be a red state? Whatever. Pitiful,immature and utterly revolting.Yeah the National Guard was there today and the red cross shouldn’t be to far behind. We don’t need no stinking FEMA! We take care of our own.
sonnyspats1 on May 6, 2007 at 4:23 AM
I just worry about these nutjobs getting real power…it’s not that big a step going from gloating over deaths in the red states to causing deaths. It certainly didn’t take long to make that transition in Russia, or Germany, or Cuba, or Cambodia, or Vietnam…or anywhere else that socialists took over.
stonemeister on May 6, 2007 at 5:20 AM
My prayers go to the all in the heartland.
Kini on May 6, 2007 at 6:34 AM
On this comment I have to disagree. Democrats = traitors and need to be shot, illegals need to just be shot. These appear on fairly regular frequency at hotair. Does it mean all hotair readers believe this or that is the Republican party stance?
Of course not. Neither does the comments of some posters at DU represent the majority of Democrats.
If the purpose of “going there” by worrying about what posters at other sites are saying is to get the thread response count up, okay fine, good strategy but call it for what it is.
Bradky on May 6, 2007 at 6:37 AM
I guess we now know who the liberal left considers IT’S enemies.
My best wishes go out to those who have lost their homes and livelyhoods, and I pray for their protection in the coming days. I grieve for the dead and hope they did not suffer before the end. I pray for a speedy recovery for their town.
I wished for all these things when Katrina struck New Orleans as well. Greensburg isn’t as big as NO, but that doesn’t make the loss of life and property and livelihood any less tragic.
And Bradky, I don’t recall which posts you are referring to that call for the shooting of illegal aliens, or the execution of Democrats here in the Hotair comments with the “regular frequency” you claim. I would say that the frequency of reponses on popular leftist websites (DU and HuffPo to name a couple) are overwhelmingly extreme and unhinged. I would like to do a comparison between this thread and the similar threads on those other two sites to see what percentage of responses fall into those particular categories. It’d be an eye-opener, I think.
DakRoland on May 6, 2007 at 7:38 AM
And where are these comments? They certainly aren’t frequent, and I can’t say as I’ve seen them at all… though if they have occurred, in all likelihood the commenter was banned immediately. On the other hand the majority of comments are that bad or worse on the opposite side (see my post where I gave a sample of comments on HuffPo’s tornado thread).
RightWinged on May 6, 2007 at 7:44 AM
But on a brighter note they do seem to be finding God, I just am not still sure which one it is they worship, the one which calls for human sacrifice like the Aztecs and Islam or the one of compassion preached by Jews and Christians.
LakeRuins on May 6, 2007 at 7:49 AM
They are there as well as some pretty harsh comments about New Orleans. As I said they don’t seem to represent the “majority” of posters here. But DU and others readily jump on those comments to say “See told you they are (fill in the blank with whatever you like)”
I’m more impressed with sites whose posters have some self control and are willing to call out those in their midst for irresponsible or intolerant rants. The moderators can do that but IMHO the measure of a site’s quality is more the willingness of posters instead of moderators to do that.
But you are missing the point which is really “who cares what the other sites are saying?”
It seems like a colossal waste of time to worry about hateful comments at sites that lean the opposite of one’s political beliefs. There are many pressing issues in today’s world and the time debating solutions and causes would be a better use of people’s time.
Yet, out of boredom or sheer lack of ability to frame civil debates some people insist on going to other sites and stirring up flame wars. This happens with partisans of both sides.
As for your suggestion to do a comparison, I don’t think there is any way in the world a “scientific” analysis could be done. Too many people have multiple identities they use on the internet and at this point in time it is literally impossible to determine a true snapshot of demographics of posters at any site.
Bradky on May 6, 2007 at 7:53 AM
LOL Hardly
Bradky on May 6, 2007 at 7:55 AM
Greensburg is (was) a lovely little town that I have driven through many times. It is a real tragedy. Fema won’t need to dish out debit cards and Jesse Jackson won’t need to line up buses to take the people back because these people are the salt of the earth. You will not be seeing stories about Fema money being spent on Gucci purses or at liqour stores and porn shops.
Some of those Fema trailers in Arkansas could be put to good use now. As long as some appropriate underground shelters are put in place first.
bopbottle on May 6, 2007 at 7:58 AM
I’m not going to spend all day on researching what I know I’ve seen but here are a couple of examples.
Bradky on May 6, 2007 at 8:09 AM
Liberals are always telling me that I just don’t understand. If they had a better platform to get out their message, if I would just listen to them a bit more, I would come to understand.
Well, guess what, indoctrination of this type doesn’t work on me. The more I listen to Liberalism the less I like it, and the more I fight against it.
Lawrence on May 6, 2007 at 8:26 AM
This Hot-Air post illustrates my point perfectly. We have a major tradgedy, and all the nutty left can do is mock those who suffer. This kind of nuttiness is just creepy.
Lawrence on May 6, 2007 at 8:29 AM
Classic liberalism is a personality disorder. People afflicted with it have no ability to balance rational and emotion. Regardless of how you react to an event, emotionally or rationally, you have to go in the opposite direction to balance your thinking and actions.
Just remember, we’re all born with a librals heart- some of us, however, were also born with a brain and know how the world really works.
csdeven on May 6, 2007 at 8:51 AM
What a pathetic lot those people are. Imagine a group of people that can only feel good when they feel bad about something. That must suck.
Bradky you can find those occasional nuke em all, kill em all comments but what you usually see on conservative sites like these is an immediate admonishment of those posts by both the mods and the posters. What you see on the dem sites is the majority chiming in with agreement while anyone who might admonish their behavior is quickly called a freeper spy.
frreal on May 6, 2007 at 9:21 AM
Pray for the good folks of Oklahoma and Kansas.
And screw anybody playing politics with this.
SouthernDem on May 6, 2007 at 10:06 AM
Huffpo commenter from brooklyn is now quite easily the DUMBEST fool on the continent.He’s blaming this weather on the 2000 election.
Find a shrink, brooklyncitizen hate boy, you’ve lost it.
shooter on May 6, 2007 at 10:06 AM
Well we know from yesterday that 25 percent of Americans are insane, so looking at them DU comments we can guess who that is.
djohn669 on May 6, 2007 at 10:29 AM
The BDS libs confirmed my faith in them. When I heard this story and how bad the devestation was, one of my thoughts was to wonder how long before President Bush is blamed for this in some way. Thanks BDS sufferers for being consistent.
Mallard T. Drake on May 6, 2007 at 11:20 AM
Of course not. Neither does the comments of some posters at DU represent the majority of Democrats
repvoter on May 6, 2007 at 11:41 AM
Sad. My thoughts and prayers go out to those that lost loved ones.
As for that DU part, I didn’t have to go to the DU to hear it. My extremely liberal grandmother is in town and made some comment last night about how the tornadoes “keep missing the ranch”.
Extremely bitter old liberals are loads of fun to be around fyi.
Benaiah on May 6, 2007 at 11:52 AM
Nor do the democrats at Huffo, DailyKos, nor the 35% that believe the 9/11 conspiracy, etc. Nope, definitely not a majority of democrats. Just a small fringe group. I know. I know.
lorien1973 on May 6, 2007 at 11:52 AM
in a minimal defense the majority of DU posts on this are sympathetic and I could find about three bad posters. Unfortunately like apples a couple of bad posters spoil the whole bunch
Defector01 on May 6, 2007 at 11:54 AM
I’ll be watching for that. Thanks, See-Dubya.
RushBaby on May 6, 2007 at 11:58 AM
There always pops up those who try to say that “there is a minority of democrats who…” when something like this happens, which is every other day anymore.
What The Machine NEVER sees, however, is those same democrats/leftists calling those people out or dressing them down for their vile crap.
One has to wonder WHY.
Meanwhile, the childish fingerpointing they always do — “oh yeah, well THIS post proves that you evil rethuglicans do it too!” — is disengenuous at best, shows an inability to understand the difference between someone’s reaction to leftist tripe versus seeing that it was the leftist tripe that initiated the rightwing response in the first place.
You have to understand the absurd and childish Rules of The Left:
They can make mistakes and don’t have to apologize for any sort of the vilest filth, the Right must be absolutely perfect at all times.
The French Left has now learned to threaten violence and rioting in order to try to get elected.
The ploy won’t work, simply because the left never accounts for human nature, something they cannot understand, so the American Left will follow suit immediately.
That is because the left has never had an original idea, ever.
.
The Machine on May 6, 2007 at 12:27 PM
There was some thread on hotair a couple of months back in which a study showed a very small number of voters are engaged in the blogosphere. I can’t remember the exact figures but am pretty sure it was less than 5% of the eligible voters.
The article seemed to support the theory that mostly partisans of either party were most actively engaged.
Soooo to answer your question, my guess is that the majority of democrats have no idea those things are being said since they are not visiting DU or Kos.
Ditto the majority of republicans who would probably be disappointed at the attack dogs in their party who discount the slightest disagreement with name calling and the like.
But my main point in my comments is why waste so much time gauging what the “other” sites are saying?
Bradky on May 6, 2007 at 1:08 PM
I think you are trying to imply that if they don’t visit the blogs that they don’t have the opinions. We have poll-proof that 35% of democrats think that 9/11 was a government conspiracy. I bet you could walk up to any random liberal on the street; and get them to wish death on Cheney. Do you disagree with this?
Curious; that democrats “say things” (previous quote) but republicans are “attack dogs”. I think that says a lot about where you are coming from; right there.
lorien1973 on May 6, 2007 at 1:16 PM
How many minutes before Bushco is blamed for this?
Mojave Mark on May 6, 2007 at 1:56 PM
You know it is kind of funny - if you walk down just about any street of any town in Kentucky (my roots), you will not find anywhere close to one in three democrats that agree with the truthers, very few who agree with gun control, and many who are not too keen on high taxes for social programs, and who have children in the uniformed services.
But according to some of your associates at hotair, the simple fact that they are Democrats means they are traitorous gun grabbers who believe in cockamamie conspiracy theories who are ready to cut and run from Iraq.
So far today I have been called a jerk off, idiot, and a couple of other choice words by some posters here. What exactly do you call that? Compassionate Conservatism?
Bradky on May 6, 2007 at 4:00 PM
In response to a number of your comments above Bradky… So I said the Democrats are evil… How is that compared to death wishes, or blaming tornado victims for living in red states? I’ve repeatedly explained my conclusion that they’re evil in the past. Whether you agree or not is up to you, but it doesn’t even come close to the MAJORITY view of commenters at HuffPo (the biggest lefty blog). As for that hunting comment by someone else… I wouldn’t have used it, and I imagine if AP was paying attention he’d likely have warned the commenter if not outright banned him (we’ve all seen this happen probably a dozen times for very limited offenses). Even still, I think it comes off as a joke. But even if it wasn’t, you can’t dig months back for something like that, when we can point to this daily hatred coming from the left that remains the majority opinion.
I deliberately went to look for a HuffPo post on the tornado just to find these type of comments. I didn’t have to wonder if they were there, because I know the hate that your side is filled with. I went there ready to copy and paste because I KNEW what I’d see. No, not one questionable comment every few weeks. DOZENS A DAY, AT LEAST!
Now you want to say “why bother looking”… Well, it’s obvious you don’t want us to see your side for what it is.. But the reason to look is just that. We simply want to point out just what goes on over there, so we keep reminding ourselves what we’re up against, and exposing it to those who are unaware.
RightWinged on May 6, 2007 at 4:50 PM
This may surprise you but the only time I bother with HuffPo or DU is when one of the hotair threads reference it. Why? Because they don’t represent the majority of the party - period, end of story.
It would be unfair and irresponsible if I characterized all republicans as racist and myopic. I don’t but with some people in this forum, any disagreement is seen as reason to attack out of hand.
And as to what is my side or not my side you really don’t know what my party affiliation, if any, is. I have posted enough times in the last seven months that you could probably figure it out if you followed a few bread crumbs.
There are people at hotair who can engage in a responsible dialog without getting into name calling. That is why I post here. There are a couple of other places like townhall that are not bad either.
The most irritating thing with some party partisans is their inclination to paint millions of people as traitors or allies to terrorists (right calling out left) or karl rove acolytes in bed with government conspiracies to create fictional conflicts to support big oil(left calling out right).
I’ve said it time and time again but the majority of all voters fall right and left of center. To win their support requires much less vitriol and more logical arguments and persuasion. Whether it is Honora, Nonfactor, and myself to name a few there are some who feel the need to attack because we may be more moderate, or even, gasp a Democrat.
So in the search for civil and meaningful dialog, those are the reasons I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about what the bomb throwers on either side have to say and why I remind people there are bomb throwers on both sides.
Bradky on May 6, 2007 at 5:07 PM
The problem is you can’t a characterize us that way, but we bring the goods when we do characterize the other side. HuffPo and Kos are the biggest lefty blogs out there and their comments are DOMINATED by hate. Here you’re lucky to find a few questionable borderline comments that would come anywhere close to comparing to the majority opinion on the other side. And by the way, don’t talk to me about racism.. You talked about reading firedoglake… I hope you enjoy your blackfaced Liebermans.
RightWinged on May 6, 2007 at 5:16 PM
Thanks for providing a good example of the type of myopic posters I mentioned who seem incapable of reasonable discourse or civil dialog. Firedoglake? Never heard of it.
Bradky on May 6, 2007 at 5:21 PM
My bad Bradky, that was Nonfactor (earlier in this thread)… I stand corrected. The rest of the point stands, but it wasn’t you who frequents firedoglake. (Though you should have heard of it, it’s one of the biggest lefty blogs… so much so that Hillary guest blogged there for her first guest blogging experience… It’s owner Jane Hamsher, you might remember, was the originator of the black-face Joe Lieberman)
RightWinged on May 6, 2007 at 5:27 PM
I have lived my entire life in Tornado Alley. When I was two years old, we moved south from a town just barely in NE to KS, where I’ve been since. In the 45 years I’ve lived here, I’ve been through only one, when I lived in Manhattan — we heard the warning, got down to the basement and huddled under a sturdy table with a portable radio.
That was an F3 that didn’t kill anyone, but did injure fifty, according to the research I’ve been able to do. The damage to our house was a few shingles torn away, which me elder brothers replaced, and our lawn mower was picked up and carried a few houses up the hill (we got a call from the neighbor asking about it after the storm, and I was sent over to bring it back home).
I believe it was the same day (June 8, 1966), an hour later, the same storm system produced an F5 tornado hit Topeka, killing 16 and injuring 450. A guy I worked for a few years ago lived there at the time. He told me about how he stood at the top of the stairs to the basement looking out at the tornado. When he saw an I-beam in the air, he turned and hurled himself down the stairs. He might have hit two of them, he was moving so fast. At his grandparents’ house nearby, there was a garage built of concrete blocks on a slab foundation. After the storm, that slab was completely cleared off — you could have eaten off that floor, because it had literally been vacuumed clean. A few feet away, his grandmother’s rose bushes weren’t missing a petal.
The point is that you just never know what they’ll do. KS has had tornadoes recorded in all 12 months of the year. People probably think we’re nuts to live here, just as I think the CA folks along the San Andreas Fault are loony, or the FL people with their hurricanes….
But the thing is, even a beast like this latest F5 would cut a swath of destruction a mile wide and a few miles long. Most of the time what gets wiped out by a tornado is a few thousand acres of crops, maybe some livestock, farm equipment and buildings.
And the great advances in Doppler radar make it possible for the forecasters to tell us about the rotation in a storm cell before an actual tornado is even formed. That gives plenty of time to take cover. To put the numbers in perspective, in the 1990s there were 31 deaths (20 from the Wichita/Andover behemoth, which was on the ground for 30 miles, which is just unheard of) out of a total population of 2.6 million at the end of the decade. That’s one death per 87 thousand people.
There are many things more likely to kill me than a tornado.
The Monster on May 6, 2007 at 8:03 PM
When I was older, working in my father’s grocery store in Cottonwood Falls, one day a guy from NJ stopped in to pick up some snacks for his trip, and said “I heard on the radio there’s a tornado watch. Is it safe to drive?”
I laughed and said
The Monster on May 6, 2007 at 8:09 PM
In other news, I can only hope FNC doesn’t use that ridiculous ‘X-TREME WEATHER’ graphic again.
What on earth were they thinking.
Reaps on May 6, 2007 at 9:12 PM
I can’t believe this hasn’t happened yet; or that he and Mr. Cheney aren’t blamed for knowing the tornado was coming, and for not helping the good people in time.
Entelechy on May 6, 2007 at 11:52 PM