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"In all her 58 years, Dea Corns had never so much as seen a tornado. Contrary to what The Wizard of Oz would have you believe, destructive tornadoes are rare on the Kansas flatlands, where the small farm town of Greensburg is located. The warning siren might have sounded briefly a few times each season, but no real damage had ever resulted. So when the wail of a siren broke the evening quiet on May 4 two years ago, Corns thought nothing of it. She&amp;#039;d already kicked off her high heels and traded the suit she&amp;#039;d worn all day at the bank for her pajamas. She and her husband, Tom, were settling in for their weekly Friday date night: takeout barbecue and a rented movie. But the tornado siren continued to wail for 20 minutes. When the Cornses switched over to the television, a newscaster warned in a tight, fearful voice that a huge twister of unprecedented power was coming up from Oklahoma and that anyone in its path needed to take cover immediately. The tornado was heading straight for Greensburg \u2014 and it was moving quickly. Tom told Dea to change into jeans and boots, just in case. They went through the house, pulling favorite paintings off the walls and gathering their collection of cut glass as they moved toward the basement. First, the electricity went out. Then, just before 10 p.m., their ears began to pop. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s here,&amp;quot; Tom said.  The funnel cloud \u2014 nearly two miles wide, with winds topping 200 mph \u2014 slammed into the town, sounding like a giant helicopter, its blades slicing through roofs and walls.  Melinda Kendall, then a 37-year-old substitute teacher, waited in a friend&amp;#039;s basement with her husband, Mick, and two children. They&amp;#039;d fled so quickly, she&amp;#039;d forgotten her wedding ring and her shoes. When the lights went out, the adults shoved the kids under a desk and tried to cover themselves with sofa cushions. Then, one by one, the windows began to explode. A few blocks away, Jill Eller, 47 at the time, shouted, &amp;quot;I love you guys,&amp;quot; to her husband and teenage daughter, clinging to them in a bedroom closet. She felt the wall against her back expand and contract like an accordion as the storm tore into her house. Cassie Kirby, clerk of the town&amp;#039;s school board, huddled in her basement, where she&amp;#039;d pulled a crib mattress around her daughter, who was then 4, to protect her from what was about to hit. Above the wind she could hear an eerie, rhythmic screech, made, she learned later, by nails being sucked out of the walls. Kirby, who&amp;#039;s now 45, locked eyes with her husband, Troy, and thought, &amp;quot;This is how I&amp;#039;m going to die.&amp;quot; Then it was over. The tornado had lasted about 15 minutes. As townspeople began to emerge into the starless night, with only the beams of their flashlights to guide them, no one guessed the full extent of the devastation. It wasn&amp;#039;t until the next morning that they got a good look at the barren moonscape that used to be their town. Ninety-five percent of the buildings had been flattened or had vanished completely. When the school bus brought Jill Eller&amp;#039;s older daughter, Jordan, and 26 other students back that afternoon from an overnight trip, only one still had a house.  Century-old trees had been yanked from the ground like weeds. Cars had cartwheeled over the three-story Kiowa County Courthouse, leaving streaks of auto paint on the roof. A perfect silhouette of football bleachers marked where they&amp;#039;d crashed through the side of the high school \u2014 or what remained of it. Eleven people were dead, among them Eller&amp;#039;s close friend, Beverly Volz, who was crushed by a falling beam. The National Guard ordered everyone to leave, sealing the town&amp;#039;s borders. As Dea Corns drove away, still wearing the jeans and boots she&amp;#039;d pulled on 20 hours before, &amp;quot;in case,&amp;quot; she began to weep. Everything they had \u2014 their home, the Greensburg State Bank, which Tom&amp;#039;s family had been a part of since 1924, their entire lives \u2014 was in this community. But her grief soon gave way to resolve. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;ll just have to put it back together,&amp;quot; she thought. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;ll find a way.&amp;quot; And that&amp;#039;s how this small American town began its journey from destruction to rebirth, how its residents found the grit and the vision to transform disaster into hard-earned triumph. Not everyone shared Corns&amp;#039; determination. In the days after the tornado, one thought kept ricocheting through Jill Eller&amp;#039;s mind: If her family had to start over, they would do it somewhere else. She didn&amp;#039;t want to have to see the tornado&amp;#039;s ravages at every turn, to look up at blue sky where her roof had previously been. After the first week, she had stopped digging through the rubble. Her Greensburg was gone.  Jill, along with her husband, Scott, and their younger daughter, Jessica, then 15, was among the dozens of newly homeless townspeople who gathered in a parking lot after the storm. Through the early-morning hours of May 5, buses and trucks ferried survivors to nearby towns, where they slept in spare bedrooms or on the couches of friends and relatives or found shelter in school gyms. The looming question was whether they would ever return. Some didn&amp;#039;t: Lonnie McCollum, the 62-year-old mayor of Greensburg, resigned three weeks after the storm, and eventually moved to another town. The Ellers could understand that. They found a place to stay at a friend&amp;#039;s house in nearby Mullinville, a dozen miles west of Greensburg, where Jill had owned an oil-field supply store. Despite her daughters&amp;#039; protests that they couldn&amp;#039;t abandon their hometown, Jill thought, &amp;quot;Why go back? There&amp;#039;s nothing to go back to.&amp;quot; In truth, Greensburg, like many small towns in America, was in trouble long before the tornado. Isolated on the vast prairie, it had an aging population of 1,400. In the past decade, its school enrollment had dropped, and there had been scant new construction \u2014 just one building or two. The main tourist attraction was the World&amp;#039;s Largest Hand-Dug Well, a 109-foot-deep hole in the ground.  Yet for everyone who couldn&amp;#039;t imagine living in Greensburg again, someone else couldn&amp;#039;t imagine living anywhere else. &amp;quot;Oh, of course, we thought about picking up and leaving,&amp;quot; Bob Dixson, the town&amp;#039;s current mayor, cheerfully admits. &amp;quot;But it took my wife and me only about a day to decide. This is home.&amp;quot; It took scarcely longer than that for other small signs of resilience to appear. As soon as the National Guard allowed people back in town, Dea and Tom Corns drove to the bank. They crawled through a broken window, took tens of thousands of dollars out of the vault, and plopped a cash drawer on the hood of a pickup, declaring the bank open for business. &amp;quot;I knew people would be worried about their money.&amp;quot;  The same day, Melinda Kendall arrived at her ruined house and found her husband there, grinning. Miraculously, he&amp;#039;d found her wedding ring. He held it out and asked, &amp;quot;Will you marry me?&amp;quot; Not long after, Greensburg school superintendent Darin Headrick made a bold promise that he would find a way to keep educating Greensburg kids, despite the fact that the schools had been demolished. He knew that if parents enrolled their children in neighboring towns, it was unlikely that they&amp;#039;d ever return. &amp;quot;Whether we have 270 kids or we have one, we will be open,&amp;quot; he vowed.  And city administrator Steve Hewitt stood in the middle of Main Street, surrounded by debris, and saw opportunity. &amp;quot;Every problem, every issue this town has ever had \u2014 this is our chance to make it right,&amp;quot; the 34-year-old Greensburg native told the mayor. Then, knowing this was the town&amp;#039;s last chance, he added, &amp;quot;We cannot screw this up.&amp;quot;  Hewitt had worked at other government jobs across the region before moving back home with his wife and baby one year earlier. He admits to more than a small amount of ambition, but nothing had prepared him for the task of guiding a ghost town back to life. Where could he even start? The townspeople were just emerging from their shock; hearts had been broken as surely as buildings. But these are not people to underestimate, Hewitt thought. The community just needs something to rally around, something to believe in. He began talking to Mayor McCollum and other town leaders about how the new Greensburg would have to be different, how it could be better. They wanted to be smart about rebuilding, to transform the dying prairie town into something vibrant, cost-effective, and modern. They wanted something that would attract new people and businesses. Most of all, they wanted a town that their kids would stay in when they grew up. On May 6, two days after the storm struck, Kathleen Sebelius, then the Kansas Governor (she was nominated as Health and Human Services Secretary at press time), arrived to survey the damage. Before her press conference, she ducked into a trailer for a quick huddle with Hewitt, Headrick, the mayor, a county commissioner, and a state house representative. When she asked what they wanted to do next, ideas spilled out in a flood of urgent, unformed strategies. Sebelius, known for her commitment to environmental policy, listened for a few minutes and then summed it all up in one simple statement. &amp;quot;You want to make it green.&amp;quot; In that instant, a vision was born. Greensburg would be re-created as the first town in America designed to be environmentally progressive \u2014 the first to use resources that wouldn&amp;#039;t run out, to conserve energy, to protect its surroundings \u2014 not as a political statement or a scientific experiment, but as its best hope for survival. &amp;quot;You could hear the optimism in their voices,&amp;quot; Sebelius recalls. &amp;quot;Greensburg had found its silver lining.&amp;quot; Moments later, she addressed reporters with what would become a rallying cry in the months ahead: &amp;quot;Let&amp;#039;s put the green back in Greensburg!&amp;quot; No one knew how many people would attend the first town hall meeting. Steve Hewitt had put the word out for miles across the region, hoping to lure dispersed residents back to town. It was May 11, one week after the tornado, and he sat inside a giant striped circus tent in the middle of Davis Park, nervously waiting. But by the time the meeting was called to order, 700 people were packed inside with him. First, the mayor reassured the crowd that the town would be rebuilt. Hewitt stepped forward to add that they would make Greensburg even better than before. People jumped to their feet and began to applaud and cheer. And almost immediately they got to work, discussing the importance of rebuilding the official town structures \u2014 the municipal offices, the schools, and the other city landmarks. Hewitt didn&amp;#039;t exactly talk about going green at that first meeting. He thought townspeople would associate the green movement \u2014 with its earnest, left-leaning advocates, including the Hollywood elite \u2014 with something trendy, gimmicky, or just plain expensive. And he knew that the whole town had to be behind the idea for this plan to get the funding they would need to save the community. So instead of saying &amp;quot;green,&amp;quot; Hewitt talked about &amp;quot;smart.&amp;quot; If the town was smart about rebuilding, it would save money in the long run. By using locally produced or recycled materials, everyone could save shipping costs. Relying on renewable resources for heating and cooling public buildings would mean they would pay less money for utilities.  Over that summer, tent meetings were held almost weekly to discuss how the town would proceed. Despite the difficulties, the crowded sessions at times felt almost like summer carnivals, with food spread on long tables and local bands playing country-western. Out-of-town builders, architects, mortgage brokers, and emergency-assistance groups set up booths. Kids played in the one playground that had been left largely unscathed while their parents debated the town&amp;#039;s future. Committees were formed to consider whether the library and museum should be combined, how uniform the storefronts ought to be, and other issues. Preliminary sketches of downtown were posted so residents could scribble opinions on them: Leave retail on Main Street or Move the municipal auditorium and library up one block north and one block east. One scrawled remark read simply Too expensive! Dea Corns remembers walking out of an early tent meeting and sheepishly asking her husband, &amp;quot;Do you know what sustainability means?&amp;quot; He didn&amp;#039;t. But like the rest of the town, the more they thought about &amp;quot;smart,&amp;quot; the more they learned about &amp;quot;green.&amp;quot; Soon phrases like &amp;quot;carbon footprint&amp;quot; entered the conversation at the meetings, as experts from across the country offered information and advice about everything from landscaping to caulking. Governor Sebelius recommended an environmentally cutting-edge architectural firm, Berkebile Nelson Immenschuh McDowell (BNIM), to provide a crash course in efficient building.  BNIM dispatched a team that included urban planner Rachel Wedel Stroer to Greensburg to meet with residents. Stroer, then 26, had grown up two hours north, in Salina. She understood the rhythm of rural Kansas and could talk to people in Greensburg about what mattered to them. They liked her; the new mayor even tried to set her up with his son. For months Stroer made the 10-hour round-trip from Kansas City, MO, to Greensburg almost weekly. She talked to people about practicality rather than principles \u2014 about how the initial costs of going green would be more than offset by the savings. At one meeting, business owners resisted the idea of planting trees on Main Street, arguing that low-hanging branches would block traffic and be messy. Instead of lecturing them about greenhouse gases, Stroer pointed them to a study showing that people spent 12 percent more money in stores with trees out front.  Still, even as excitement built, some remained skeptical. Over in Mullinville, Jill Eller thought, &amp;quot;What a load of crap. We lost 11 people and you&amp;#039;re talking about green?&amp;quot; She wanted nothing to do with the town, though when her daughters, who were cheerleaders and athletes, begged to stay enrolled in Greensburg High, she grudgingly agreed. They were there on August 15, when the schools opened in temporary trailers and 202 children filed in. That was 78 fewer than the year before, but some were making a round-trip of 60 miles or more. Eller still had no interest in getting involved. &amp;quot;I just didn&amp;#039;t want to talk about the tornado anymore,&amp;quot; she recalls. &amp;quot;After a while, you just get numb.&amp;quot; Even Dea Corns experienced green fatigue. &amp;quot;I would answer the phone, and someone would want to talk about green,&amp;quot; she remembers. &amp;quot;They would tell me all the things we had to do. I wanted to say, &amp;#039;Please, just leave me alone.&amp;#039;&amp;quot; But that changed in late summer when Corns was tapped to be on the board of a newly formed nonprofit called Greensburg GreenTown.  The grassroots organization was the brainchild of Daniel Wallach, a 49-year-old ecology-minded entrepreneur who lived just a few miles from Greensburg. Wallach, who had spent years working for nonprofits, wanted to facilitate the town&amp;#039;s greening project and had started providing educational materials and soliciting outside donations. He scored, among other things, 400 high-end, ultraefficient toilets from an Australian company. Sure, the idea struck some as funny, but one flush used three gallons less water than a traditional toilet. In a year&amp;#039;s time, if all 400 were installed, that could add up to 5 million gallons. Flattered, Corns agreed to serve on the board. While she was no eco-expert, she took her responsibilities seriously, poring over construction literature and environmental-impact research. What resonated most: the long-term savings \u2014 how harnessing the sun and wind could provide low-cost power that would never run out; how the bricks blown from old buildings by the tornado could be reused; how capturing rain in cisterns could cut water usage. These were the kind of strategies that had run in Greensburg&amp;#039;s blood since the 1880s when it was founded and windmills stretched across the horizon. Waste not, want not. That fall the town officially hired BNIM to create a sustainable master plan for Greensburg that laid out recommendations for everything from streetlights to solar panels, incorporating both the townspeople&amp;#039;s ideas and committee findings. By then, the town had embraced the idea of green public buildings. Steve Hewitt had a brainstorm: What if instead of just going green, the town went super-green? The U.S. Green Building Council designates structures with the highest level of sustainability with a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) platinum rating. Currently there are only about 100 such buildings in the nation. Hewitt wondered if the town could build virtually every city building \u2014 the school, the town hall, everything \u2014 to the LEED platinum standard. Even some of the architects involved weren&amp;#039;t sure if it would be feasible. Hewitt pressed his case with planners, arguing that the move could help attract desperately needed new industry and corporate donations. On December 17, the city council, in accordance with the wishes of the town, voted unanimously to approve the plan. Greensburg was going to be the greenest town in America.  The city had decided that its public face \u2014 its official buildings and town structures \u2014 would be green. But the council didn&amp;#039;t want to force people to adopt the same eco-friendly practices and green construction in their own homes as they rebuilt them. Nonetheless, the townspeople&amp;#039;s heightened awareness \u2014 and their civic pride \u2014 pushed them in that direction. And so did their banker. &amp;quot;So how&amp;#039;s the construction going?&amp;quot; Dea Corns would ask her Greensburg State Bank customers. Then she&amp;#039;d add, &amp;quot;Want to sign up for a free low-flow toilet?&amp;quot; Some people, wanting to get back to normal as quickly as possible, balked at the extra planning time that more sustainable structures took and at the up-front costs. Corns remembers one customer who was part of a government program in which people joined together to build houses. Everyone had to put in about 20 hours a week of sweat equity, and no one could move in until all the houses were done. The homes were equipped with tankless water heaters and state-of-the-art high-efficiency furnaces, which Corns&amp;#039; customer felt were worthless. &amp;quot;Once I move in, I&amp;#039;m going to rip all of that stuff out,&amp;quot; the man would grumble. But as the houses neared completion, he began to grin when he gave Corns his progress reports, saying, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m going to save so much money,&amp;quot; marveling at the home&amp;#039;s craftsmanship. &amp;quot;In the end, he was so proud of that house and having helped build it,&amp;quot; Corns remembers.  For many others, too, the initial impetus to go green was financial. Melinda Kendall&amp;#039;s new log-style home has a high-efficiency furnace and water heater, and an attic insulated with shredded newspapers. In the old house, wintertime utility bills were over $200 a month. In their new home, the first winter bill was less than half that amount. &amp;quot;We don&amp;#039;t have any regular light bulbs,&amp;quot; Kendall says. &amp;quot;And I now realize that if we throw everything into a landfill, we&amp;#039;re not being good stewards of what God has given us.&amp;quot;  Construction is still under way, but when Greensburg is fully restored, about 70 percent of the houses and 90 percent of the businesses will be green. Even Jill Eller came around. As she stopped by for school activities, she sensed the excitement. As she hovered at planning meetings, the economics began to make sense. The four-bedroom house the Ellers lost had cost $75,000, and their utilities ran up to $400 a month. But a friend knew an architect who wanted to build a house with superinsulated panels. Six to eight inches of Styrofoam would be wedged inside the walls, allowing the 2,000-square-foot house to be heated and cooled for just $50 a month. Eller realized that, thanks to $90,000 in insurance money and the savings they&amp;#039;d get on utility bills, they could build the architect&amp;#039;s $250,000 vision for a mortgage of about $750 a month, versus the $600 they&amp;#039;d been paying. &amp;quot;I think this is the way to go,&amp;quot; Eller told her husband regarding the upgrade. In March 2008 the Ellers broke ground on what would become one of the greenest houses in Greensburg. With the zeal of a new convert, Eller combed the Internet for more ideas. She selected bamboo floors and snapped up three of those low-flow toilets. She chose a high-efficiency showerhead and installed skylights and specially angled windows to take advantage of the warmth and light of the sun. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re like the poster family for green,&amp;quot; she admits with a laugh.  &amp;quot;You can remember Greensburg because of what happened to us \u2014 or because of what we did afterward,&amp;quot; says Steve Hewitt. As always, he&amp;#039;s being optimistic. He knows the town&amp;#039;s fate still hangs in the balance. All government offices are still in trailers, as is the hospital. It may be over five years before everything is rebuilt. But the major projects are under way, and a few have actually been completed, including a community arts center made of recycled wood and glass, called &amp;quot;5.4.7,&amp;quot; for the date of the tornado. The new school should be completed by fall 2010. It will be ecologically state-of-the-art, with natural lighting, a cistern to collect rainwater, and a geothermal heat pump that will use the earth&amp;#039;s natural warmth to provide heating. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re going to have the coolest school!&amp;quot; chirps 16-year-old Jessica Eller. &amp;quot;If I was in any other town, I&amp;#039;d be jealous.&amp;quot;  More than 800 of the town&amp;#039;s original 1,400 have moved back, and last fall, 25 new students enrolled in Greensburg&amp;#039;s school, the biggest influx in years. Among the new faces were the kids of a woman who came with a volunteer group and decided to stay. And not long ago, Cassie Kirby took a call at the school board offices from an Oregon family who had heard about the green initiative and wanted information about moving to Greensburg. (Since President Obama saluted Greensburg in his February 24 address to Congress, the phone may ring more often.) Kirby isn&amp;#039;t surprised. The rebuilding has shown her how strong the town is. &amp;quot;What I worried about was losing the school, the dime store, the grocery store, the theater, everything we had grown up with. All that was us,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;But now I realize that our community is still here. And that we&amp;#039;re stronger than ever.&amp;quot; DID YOU KNOW? Greensburg is the first U.S. city to have 100 percent LED streetlights. Total annual savings, versus less efficient traditional lights, will be more than $100,000 Starting this fall, Greensburg will have more wind and hydropower than it can use (thanks to the development of a wind farm), offsetting any fossil-fuel usage The projected reduction in the town&amp;#039;s carbon emission for just one year could equal more than 5,000 tons of carbon dioxide, or enough to fill 500 Goodyear blimps  All storm-water runoff on Main Street (up to 11,000 gallons) will be captured and used to irrigate local landscaping "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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