Greensburg, Kansas: Extraordinary Transformation
by John Picard on 04.22.08
John Picard is a sustainability expert, TreeHugger guest contributor, and consultant for the City of Greensburg, Kansas. A 13-part series about Greensburg, which was leveled by a tornado and is being rebuilt green, produced by Leonardo DiCaprio, will air on Planet Green television beginning in June.
Right now in nearly the exact geographic center of the continental United States a town in America’s heartland is rebuilding from scratch after a taking a direct hit from a category 5 tornado. All that was left were the sidewalks and the underground sewer lines. That effort merits a story in itself but what makes it even more noteworthy is that the people of Greensburg, Kansas have chosen to move from ordinary to extraordinary...
Imagine a community for 1500 people designed as a state of the art working model for green building and energy, hybrid design efficiency and genuine intelligent design. A community that generates revenue by producing excess energy, has superior air and water quality, and a world class infrastructure that enables and enhances the very essence of community. A community that quite simply is a better place to grow, work, live and raise families, and that shows that when humans do our very best work that we are simply amazing and in fact, a force of and for nature in our own right. That's what Greensburg, Kansas is set to become. (For more on Greensburg's events see their blog).
The most notable discoveries I've made in my own life are the ones that have allowed me to find contentment. Not surprisingly, my satisfaction on a personal level has pretty much paralleled and grown in tandem with the substance of my professional life. For myself, and I suspect most people, consciously or unconsciously we just can’t feel good about ourselves unless we feel good about what we're doing with our lives. And at the point we begin doing something special, well that's how we begin to feel about ourselves. And that may end up being the most exciting thing about Greensburg, maybe even more than its resurrection and the distinction of being an "ecotown" or becoming the city that changes the way America looks at building and boosts the ongoing revolution in the construction industry. The people of Greensburg are onto something special. Every bit the pioneers that their forbearers were 200 years ago when they first landed on the prairie, I suspect their own transformation will be even more remarkable than the one in store for their town.
more about Greensburg, Kansas
President Bust to Speak at Greensburg, Kansas Graduation
Introducing Daniel Wallach of Greensburg, Kansas
The CBS Early Show in Greensburg
Planet Green Greensburg Fan Site
John Picard is a guest contributor to TreeHugger. Read more of his columns here.
Now are these homes their building Tornado proof or are we talking about the same kind of people that live in Florida that rebuild every year or two after a hurricane?
If so, why bother. Imagine the waste and the insurance scamming thats involved?
Good for Greensburg. Louisiana could take a page from their book in their rebuilding process and turn a horrible situation into an opportunity to clean up and modernize.
I honestly don't know why this isn't written into the building codes, that anytime someone is doing a rebuild of more than a certain percentage of a structure (say 50 or 75%) that was damaged by something like fire, flood, etc, or due to a significant remodel, they must use LEED standards.
Great news. I'm excited to see how it turns out.
I was wondering what the difference in standards are. I have only heard of http://www.eflbuilder.com/ because a contractor is building a neighborhood down the street from my apartment.
My dad and I looked through the contractors advertised "Green" specs and it alll seemed to be a con. There was a lot of stuff that any decent house would have that they were advertising as Green.
What are the differences between efl and leed?
Thanks
Seth
This is much, much more than rebuilding the city as it was, there is a vision there... they're thinking Emerald City in the Wizard of Oz... They want to build the largest environmental library in the world... (tornado proof we hope)
I met Kathleen Sebelius, the governor of Kansas, at Yale a few days ago... Greensburg is gearing up to become a great tourist attraction for the state, with Lee-oh filming there, rumors of the North American Highway plowing through... It's a green rush!
Think Burning Man, but all year round... Pack up your bags, let's move to Greensburg, rebuild the world in our green image! Planet Green is banking on the city erupting to promote their new channel.
The School of Architecture from the University of Kansas is helping with this project. They are building the first LEED certified structure in Greensburg.
http://www.features.ku.edu/greensburg/
Adam? Would you rather they move in with you?
Adam has a point, if they're going to rebuild, I sure hope they have a plan to tornado proof their houses.
If they're just going to build some lightweight eco-friendly homes in the same place, I wouldn't waste a dime helping them. You can't beat mother nature, she always wins in the end, so you work with her, or not at all.
If my house got destroyed by a tornado, I certainly would not be rebuilding in the same place, just with more eco-friendly materials, it's a waste because the chances of it getting knocked down again are pretty high. I'd be moving or getting an earth bermed home. I see neither of those options being looked at so I can't garner too much sympathy.
The sad part is, the second time a tornado comes to town and destroys all their hard work, they're going to look at green methods and say "This didn't help us" and get a bad taste in their mouth because it didn't "save" them like they mistakingly thought it would.
Um, you can't really build tornado proof buildings, if an F5 is coming though your neighborhood, your pretty much screwed. However if you build a bomb shelter about 10 feet underground, that is another story. The most dangerous thing about a tornado is not the wind its the debris that occurs, like 2 x 4's going though a tree, like the tree is a piece of paper.
Tornados are also not like hurricanes, they can happen anywhere, but its rare for them to hit the same place twice. I live in the midwest, and for the last 3 weeks the tornado sirens have went off about 5 times, and there still hasn't been a tornado, just funnel clouds (these are basically tornados that haven't hit the ground, they don't cause damage while they are in they sky. The actual chances of getting hit by a tornado is very low, most hit in corn fields.
"Trailers are not part of our current menu of options, precisely because we can't tell what is a safe level of formaldehyde in a trailer," Chertoff said.
How did all those people in Greensburg get the Mobile homes they were/are living in?
Louisiana and Mississipppi got travel trailers (soaked w/formaldehyde) the kind you see hitched to a regular pick up truck. We got thousands of them, then they took them and left everyone to find their own. Insurance has still not paid for damage and from 2 million people in New Orleans pre Katrina we now have 36,000. Including 1,000 homeless that never were before Katrina. Why has the gov't forsaken us but is quickly helping every other state?
Chertoff described our situation as:
"the scale of Katrina which is essentially an ... equivalent of a nuclear blast or disaster," Chertoff said Friday June 13, 2008! in an interview with The Associated Press
Total number of deaths 1,4641
Total number of citizens found alive 10,746
Total number of citizens remaining missing 135
People displaced 1.3 Million
These numbers are also from a govt agency and if you live here you know they have under estimated.
So if your disaster is closer to a nuclear blast you can forget about any help to rebuild.