Seems like a few dozen tornados hit western Kansas each year. In most cases, it's the best place for them. Aside from a few grossly polluted meat factory towns, there's damn little to hit out there. The southwest corner is once and future desert, temporarily irrigated as a tax shelter for profits from a sizable natural gas field. But the water comes from the soon-to-be-depleted Ogalala aquifer -- not that the gas is going to last much longer. The northwest corner has neither gas nor water -- just enough shortgrass to graze cattle on. But Friday night a tornado, and a big one at that, managed to hit something: a town called Greensburg, or should I say former town? Aside from the grain elevator, there's not much left standing. (See pictures.)

Greensburg is 120 miles straight west of Wichita. I've driven through town at least a hundred times, mostly on my way to visit relatives in Kinsley and Dodge City. (My father was born on a farm near Spearville, about midway between Kinsley and Dodge City. His grandfather, I believe it was, homesteaded there in the 1870s.) Greensburg is the seat of Kiowa County, which otherwise is empty farmland. The latest census reported 1574 people lived there, but my recollection is that during the '50s more than 3000 lived there. Other little factoids I remember include that Kiowa was one of the four Kansas counties still dry in the '60s, and that it was one of the 3-5 most heavily Republican counties. Those things may have changed as well: one newspaper report noted that the "pub" was one of the few building still standing, and the Democratic Party minority leader in the state senate comes from Greensburg. One other thing that changed was that the signs pointing to the World's Largest Hand-Dug Well have gotten smaller and fewer over the years, although you couldn't miss them. Presumably the well itself went unscathed, but the museum and gift shop are splinters now.

The tornado was rated EF-5, which is to say it was off the Fujita scale that was recently Enhanced to measure more powerful tornados. This one left a footprint 1.5 miles wide and 22 miles long, with wind speeds in excess of 200 mph. I've lived here over 30 years, through many tornado reports, but none that huge. FEMA's on the case now, but the odds that Greensburg will be rebuilt aren't good. It's not so much that anyone fears it might happen again, although clearly such storms are likely to happen elsewhere. It's just that the area was already dying. Rural America limps along living off its depreciation, while new investment goes elsewhere. And the long term trends, already evident in the last 25 years, are against it: the farms consolidate and depopulate; the small towns create few new jobs, offer little in the way of attractive services, and age; the aquifer is running dry; and global warming models promise hotter and dryer weather -- western Kansas will become eastern New Mexico without the elevation to lower the temperature. Twenty-some years ago there was a big flap over a couple of New Jersey academics arguing that the best thing to do with western Kansas in the long run would be to turn it into a Buffalo Commons. That's still in the cards.

A couple of years ago I drove around north of Dodge City and Spearville and searched out the houses of two of my father's uncles -- places I hadn't been since the early '60s. Both houses still stood, but hadn't been inhabited for decades. Uncle Otto's was pretty decrepit even when he lived there, and had turned into little more than a pile of rubbish. Uncle Jim's was a nice place when we would visit there, but while it was more intact, it too had worn down to bare wood and broken windows. That's what usually happens -- call it entropy. I also drove through Kinsley, which was about half the town it used to be: not that it shrunk physically, but it sort of caved in on itself, like what old age does to you. Greensburg was like that too, but entropy isn't always gradual. This time the long, slow, imperceptible decay got compressed into a few horrifying minutes. The only good news is that now at least some people will notice. The irony is that what made Greensburg seem so pathetic all these years was how hard they tried, mostly in vain, to get anyone's attention. And now it's too late.