Kansas town begins mourning

Several hundred people, weary from days of sifting through rubble, on Thursday focused their grief on those lost to the tornado that had leveled their town.

“None of us chose to be here this day,” the Rev. Larry Bassett told the gathering at the United Methodist Church in nearby Mullinville. “We’ve not only lost a friend. We’ve lost a whole community.”

He was talking about Beverly Lynn Volz, 52, one of nine people in this southwest Kansas farming town killed by the May 4 tornado.

The longtime Greenburg resident, who adopted every stray cat that made its way onto her front porch, “was a good woman, loved by so many people,” said Theresa Nesten, 57, a friend who had traveled from Chicago to help family members recover from the storm. “So were all those who were lost.”

The funerals began after officials on Wednesday called off the search for survivors. For days, rescuers -- unsure how many of Greenburg’s 1,600 residents were unaccounted for -- had combed through the mountains of debris that in spots still tower more than 20 feet.

Part of the problem, officials said, was that many people were staying with friends or relatives in the region and had not checked in at City Hall or nearby shelters.

The list of those who made it out safely has grown slowly, by word of mouth and cellphone text-messages.

“We rely on our own to figure out who’s safe and who’s not,” said Dennis McKinney, a farmer and state representative who lost his home in the storm. “It’s the benefit of living in a small town. Everyone knows everyone.”

Besides, “every pile of debris has been searched,” said Sharon Watson, director of public affairs for the Kansas Adjutant General’s Department. “I’m not saying that as we get a few feet under the debris, we might not find something.”

Caravans of dump trucks wove through Greensburg on Thursday, hauling tree limbs and thick trunks to a refuse center northwest of town. Throughout the day, a column of black smoke filled the air with the scent of pine sap and burning wood from trees and house frames.

Most of the roads have been cleared, but utilities have not been restored. The town’s water tower is now a twisted pile of rebar and steel.

Nearly everything in the Kiowa County seat is gone. The 1.7-mile-wide twister that cut through Greensburg -- a town that’s only 1 1/2 square miles -- ripped apart the schools, the library, the police and fire stations, the single-screen movie theater. Just one of the town’s 10 churches is standing.

Residents who labored in the blistering sun Thursday, separating precious possessions from debris, were eager for news of their neighbors, no matter how heartbreaking.

“Did you hear about the Buckmans?” David Jantz, 49, asked his wife, Sharon, as he took a break from wiping mud off shards of their white wedding china.

Robert “Tim” Buckman, 46, was a Macksville, Kan., police officer whose patrol car was thrown about 300 feet by the tornado. The crash left him brain-dead.

He never knew that his youngest daughter, Kylee, had become engaged. A few hours before the family turned off his life support Tuesday, Kylee and her fiance were married by a family preacher at Buckman’s bedside in a Wichita hospital.

“At least he was there,” said Sharon, 46. “That’s something to be thankful for.”

The storm killed 13 people in Greensburg and neighboring counties, although officials said that number could change.

Survivors are learning to be thankful for seemingly ordinary things. As mourners filed out of the church Thursday, friends gathered up the bouquets that lined the pine altar.

The flowers smelled sweet, but it was the containers they came in that mattered: a big white coffee mug, a small gray mixing bowl, a water pitcher the shade of green grass -- items that could be used to restock kitchen cupboards.

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p.j.huffstutter@latimes.com

Times researcher Lynn Marshall in Seattle contributed to this report.