While noting the “speed” with which Greensburg is recovering from May 4 is “phenomenal,” USD 422 Superintendent Darin Headrick cautioned those listening at Kansas State’s Forum Theatre last Thursday to delay evaluation of the community’s return “for four or five years.  It’s going to take a while before dramatic results are visible.”
    Headrick was one of three local leaders presenting as part of the university’s twelfth annual Entrepreneurial Leadership Seminar in Manhattan last week, County Extension Agent Carmen Stauth and Greensburg entrepreneur Kim Gamble being the others.
    Though the three had only slightly more than half-an-hour to brief the group on the steps and progress of the community’s response to last year’s disaster, they managed to give an informative overview of how their community has coped in the eleven months since it was flattened by an EF-5 tornado.
   After briefly describing how she came to be designated the town’s Public Information Officer—Stauth mentioned she’d had only two days’ worth of web design training prior to the storm—the extension agent acknowledged she “wasn’t very prepared” for the new role thrust upon her overnight.
   Complicating her situation was the sudden expansion of her household—her in-laws and grandparents moved into her family’s undamaged farm home after losing their dwellings that night.
   Stauth recalled, however, her new workload being somewhat eased by the almost immediate influx of emergency preparedness directors from around the state.  “Some of them were on the way to Greensburg before everyone had even crawled out of their basement,” she said.
   Having been asked by organizers of Thursday’s seminar to submit the names of several leaders she “felt had risen to the top” during the crisis and its immediate aftermath, Stauth said she’d included those of City Administrator Steve Hewitt and several others, in addition to Headrick and Gamble.
   In addition to acknowledging the various and many challenges he faced as the head and most visible face of Greensburg’s public education system, Headrick took pains to list the opportunities and graces of the tragedy that befell his community eleven months ago.
   “It was a blessing we didn’t have to bury a single kid or staff member,” Headrick said.  Comparing the square mile area of Greensburg that was destroyed to the hundreds of square miles affected by Hurricane Katrina, Headrick described his community as eminently more “fixable.”
    Also noting the bad press FEMA had previously received in terms of its perceived shortcoming in responding to Katrina, Headrick said, “I don’t know what you’ve heard about FEMA, but they were there right away helping us figure out what needed to be fixed first and how we might go about paying for it.”
    As for challenges, Headrick told the gathering that 160 of the 200 students from the just completed school year were homeless after the tornado and that virtually “one hundred percent” of the community had been displaced by the tornado.
   Gamble reviewed the rationale and organization of such strategic planning organs as the Public Square/Steering Committee groups, describing the set up as a way of “bringing people from all four sectors (education, government, business, health and human services) of the community around one table (in order to) maximize and not duplicate efforts and services.”
   She cited as an example the decision of the group that oversight of the emerging art center should fall under the area of education, rather than health and human services.
   Gamble also referenced the balancing act she and other leaders have tried to maintain between the impatience of fellow entrepreneurs to get back to business as soon as possible and the importance of first getting a plan in place.
   “People in business for themselves are go-getters and want things done yesterday,” Gamble said.  “But you have to temper that with a need for strategic planning.  We didn’t want to just put the community back as fast as possible, but to make it more viable than it was before May 4.”
    Just as Headrick had earlier lauded the efforts of FEMA, Gamble gave kudos to USDA Rural Development for its flexibility in dealing with the needs of the business community, homeowners and residents.
    “A lot of the time they’d say, ‘we don’t have anything (in the way of an existing program) to fit that, so let’s see what we can come up with,’” Gamble said.
   She also referred to the ongoing need to address shortfalls in housing and space for both returning and new businesses.  “There’s more businesses that want to come back than there are spaces in the business incubator,” she said.  “So we need to look at what can be done for them.”
    Speaking for a second time, Headrick continued his theme of accentuating possibilities rather than obstacles, saying the tornado had presented a “tremendous opportunity” to the survivors of a town dying “a slow death.”
   “The tornado put a fork in us and forced us to discuss how we could come back better,” he said.  “We’ve been given a blank slate where we can build something our children can learn from and that other communities can learn from.”
   As for soon-to-be-realized developments on which the recovering community can hang its hat, Headrick included being close to “having wireless connectivity throughout town” and a “state of the art educational facility.”  He shared credit for the town’s progress to date amongst his board of education, City Administrator Steve Hewitt, Mayor John Janssen, City Council, and County Commission.
   As for the Greensburg that existed prior to May 4, Headrick said, “We don’t have that town anymore, so if you want to live in Greensburg the way it was you’ll have to move away and find another place that’s a mirror image of how we were a year ago.  We’ll be something completely new.”