Twister, wall cloud, cyclone, call it what you want, on May 4th 2007 one of the highest recorded winds ever produced from a tornado struck the small town of Greensburg, Kansas. The storm was nearly off the scale, a class EF-5 tornado, called by the National Severe Storms Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma. The hurricane like winds well over 210 mph, leveled 95% of the town structures and took the lives of eleven people. That was about two years ago, now the town is living up to its name. The rebirth of the farming community has taken a green approach of sustainability with a renewable sense of energy production and conservation. From platinum LEED’s , (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), certified public buildings, a futuristic Arts Center with solar panels, wind turbines and a green glass facade to city hybrid fleet vehicles, Greensburg is setting an example of green collar mindfulness Al Gore would be jealous of. A steady parade of journalists, The Discovery Channel, bloggers of all shapes and forms and also your environmentally concerned tourists flood Greensburg to see what the earth friendly buzz is about. The call for an unconventional energy path is getting louder with every rebuilt home using bamboo flooring to solar panels. The newly under-construction city hall is making use of sustainable technologies in tandem with the application of recycled materials for rebuilding the public recreation areas fallen victim to the killer tornado. We all need to give Greensburg two very high green thumbs-up for showing us all an alternative path to follow.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 22nd, 2009 at 12:30 am and is filed under Green Solutions, Solar Energy, environmental stewardship, hybrid vehicles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.