[meteorite-list] Wired mention of tornado and SA

From: Darren Garrison <cynapse_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 08 May 2007 11:17:15 -0500
Message-ID: <hf8143tkep1rl9mahp1p24tgcv9cqrkpio_at_4ax.com>

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/05/what_happened_t.html

What Happened to Greensburg
Half a year ago, Wired ran a story about a guy who'd built a makeshift metal
detector to hunt for meteorites under the corn and wheat fields of southwestern
Kansas. Steve Arnold wasn't a Kansan, but he took a house in Greensburg?heart of
Kiowa county?to be near the fields that, thousands of years ago, were the site
of the Brenham meteor fall. Greensburg already had, as a roadside attraction, a
1,000-pound specimen of pallasite meteorite, the largest ever found in the US,
until Arnold found a bigger rock.

When we did the Wired Science TV show pilot we went to Greensburg to talk to
Arnold. We even found another rock?ours was only about a 50-pounder, on sale now
for $12,000. The town was a perfectly nice place. Lots of boarded-up stores on
the main drag, just like you find in any town in the middle of the country these
days. Lots of open space. Not too many places to get a meal. Trim little houses.

And now Greensburg is basically gone.

On Saturday, a tornado more than half a mile wide ripped through town, with
winds more than 200 miles per hour. That's an F-5, for you stormwatchers. There
isn't much left.

Wired's photo editor, Zana Woods, pinged Steve Arnold. Turns out he's okay; he
wasn't in town. His house is as ripped up as the rest of the place.

I've never been anywhere that isn't there anymore. I mean, the people of
Greensburg will rebuild. The town as an idea is still there even if the physical
structures are now, as one news report had it, largely reduced to 30-foot-high
piles of rubble. The 1,000-pound pallasite at the Big Well is gone, apparently.
No one knows where.

We build our cities out of things, objects?wood and plaster, mostly. Some metal.
And sometimes nature pulls all those things apart, reveals their guts.

I was in Greensburg for a night. That's it. We didn't even stay in town for
dinner. But all of us at Wired and Wired Science are thinking about the
residents there. Our hearts go out to them because, even if we can't know what
it feels like to lose every concrete thing that says "home," we know a little
about what it means to remember things that live only in time but no longer in
space. It's hard enough to remember a world that no longer exists?as all of us
do: you can't go home again. But to have that world ripped away by force, all of
a sudden? Awful.

We wish them well as they rebuild.
Received on Tue 08 May 2007 12:17:15 PM PDT