August 09, 2007
Ed. Note: This article was originally published
by the
Kansas Association of Mappers (KAM) and is reprinted here with permission
in an abbreviated version. The original article can be found here (pdf).
The stories in newspapers nationwide said: "At 9:45pm on Friday, May 4,
2007, the lives of the nearly 1400 citizens of Greensburg, Kansas were
changed forever." What they should have said was: "What happened on May
4, 2007 will change the lives of 2.7 million people forever." Why?
Because the entire state of Kansas will feel the impact of the awesome
tornado that devastated the town - today, tomorrow, and for years to
come. This story is to exemplify the obstacles that a few of our fellow
Kansas Association of Mappers (KAM)
members had to face in order to "rebuild" the city.
Well before the storm hit, the National Weather
Service (NWS) informed
residents that they were under an unusual "Tornado Emergency." NWS
predicted the exact path of the storm, directly through the small town
of Greensburg. Tornado sirens sounded 20 minutes before it actually
hit. The tornado, which started 13 miles south of Greensburg and
destroyed homes throughout Kiowa County, grew into a two-mile wide
monster, with a path of destruction that stretched for 22 miles.
There were a total of 12 tornadoes that hit Kansas on May 4th. The
tornado that formed just northeast of Greensburg was rated as a strong
EF5 tornado, with winds reaching speeds of up to 205 miles per hour.
According to the NWS, the tornado that hit Greensburg was the first "5"
rating on the recently enhanced Fujita Scale and the first "5"
classification since May 3, 1999, when an F5 tornado ripped through the
Oklahoma City area, killing 36 people. The series of tornadoes from
Friday night through the weekend left 12 people dead in Kansas, nine in
Greensburg alone.
D.J. McMurry, the appraiser for nearby Pratt County and a member of
KAM, arrived 10 minutes after the tornado tore through the small
southwestern Kansas town. Though McMurry works in Pratt, he lives just
outside Greensburg on a farm. He has family who also live there, his
father and a brother, both of whom lost their homes to the storm. In
the blackness of night, he was fortunate to find his family members. He
said, "You may end up helping two or three people, just trying to find
your own family - it was very difficult."
Once he made sure his family was safe, McMurry
headed back to his farm.
Although a mandatory evacuation of the town was ordered shortly after
the tornado hit, he drove his skid loader back to town and began
clearing debris from whatever streets he could access. McMurry said
that a person could not go anywhere - trees, telephone poles and house
debris covered the streets, making it virtually impossible to drive a
normal vehicle through. He helped move debris and helped families in
need as much as he could, well into Saturday morning.
Even the street markers were gone - the city's residents were unsure
where things used to be, let alone the multitude of emergency personnel
and volunteers from neighboring counties. McMurry had the same problem.
He has lived there his entire life, but said when he was traveling down
Bay Street, which forms the town's western border, he got lost two or
three times. There were no buildings left - he had no sense of
direction, no landmarks to reference. Before the tornado, he knew where
residents' homes were just by sight; he knew how to get there by
knowing where to turn, not necessarily by street name. That night, he
couldn't tell one home from the next because of the destruction.
Fellow KAM member Bruce Hardesty called McMurry at 10:30 that night to
see if he was alright. McMurry called him back at 2:00am to say
his farm had not been hit by the tornado. Hardesty told him that if he
needed any help to please give Hardesty a call. At 1:30pm Saturday
afternoon, McMurry did exactly that - he called Hardesty and said that
they needed maps. Hardesty told him he would get to the office in about
10 minutes. Martin Bieker, Technical Services manager with R&S
Digital where Hardesty also works, met him at their office in Great
Bend.
Hardesty began downloading data from DASC, the Data Access &
Support Center located in Lawrence, Kansas. Hardesty and Bieker began
transferring the TIGER street data files, KDOT highways and 2006 NAIP
one-meter color orthophotography to his computer - anything that would
show Greensburg and/or Kiowa County and could be used to create a map.
There was no information specifically relevant to Kiowa County or to
Greensburg itself, such as parcel data. He was unable to obtain any
additional photography other than the DOQs or U.S. Agriculture aerials,
which are not sub-meter resolution.
The data was emailed to McMurry in Pratt and he began putting the
information together into a GIS - something from which a map could be
created and plotted. Hardesty and Bieker arrived in Pratt later
Saturday afternoon and met with McMurry, after downloading the
available 2002 DOQs and 2006 NAIP photography. They brought all the
information on DVDs, just in case it needed to be sent elsewhere.
The plotting of maps ended up taking nearly 25 minutes per page, so due
to time restrictions, McMurry and Hardesty decided to make copies of
one map on a large-format copier and get them out to the field. Those
crude maps, with the TIGER files, road names and NAIP photography, were
given to emergency officials Saturday night. They later heard stories
of the rescue crews and other volunteers taping those and other old
maps together on the floor of the FEMA trailer to create a larger-scale
and "useable" map.
Saturday night brought even more tornado scares. The dryline that
brought the initial tornado Friday night stayed along the same path.
The Saturday storms spawned a few more tornadoes; luckily they were all
away from Greensburg. The recovery efforts were discontinued, and a
mandatory evacuation was set into place, just in preparation for more
severe weather.
Sunday, May 6th was a sort of "sit-and-wait" day for Hardesty and
McMurry. They continued to create more maps - newer maps with even more
data, but still using DASC data. Those maps were also printed, copied
and provided to personnel on-site in Greensburg Sunday morning.
Hardesty and McMurry knew what they needed to do - build better maps
with data from inside the Kiowa County Courthouse.
There followed a frantic period of trying to piece together any data
they could get their hands on. They were eventually able to get into
the courthouse and scan some 100- and 400-scale mylar tax maps they
found. They also found a harddrive containing Year 2000 aerial
photography. But this was incredibly difficult to do, and there was
absolutely no metadata.
Wednesday morning, Hardesty brought with him to Greensburg a multitude
of plotted maps that Bieker had created - maps that could actually be
used in the field without having to tape them together. Hardesty and
McMurry spent part of the morning handing out the maps they had created
to the search and rescue crews, FEMA and other organizations. They had
created more detailed maps for the city of Greensburg than had ever
been available before.
Kansas Gas Services (KGS) in Topeka was also able to provide some data,
once personnel there understood it was for a rescue effort. "In an
emergency situation you have to have this kind of reciprocation from
everyone involved," remarked Hardesty. "Without their data, we wouldn't
have had addresses for the buildings - no way to make a logical kind of
map that could be used on the ground. We just needed to get in contact
with the right person!"
So, the question remains: Will the problems that McMurry and Hardesty
encountered during the Greensburg mapping situation - having to
frantically piece together whatever they could get their hands on -
provide a much-needed drive for other counties in Kansas to "get on the
ball"?
"There needs to be a push to get all local GIS data in the state of
Kansas to DASC," Hardesty persisted. "A lot of counties have the ˜I
paid for this, it's mine' mindset. A lot of counties say, ˜We have a
GIS,' when they really don't have a working GIS. Then there are the
ones that do have a viable GIS and they're just reluctant to give out
what they do have."
Hardesty continued, "If you're going to have a GIS in a county,
somebody needs to be able to show more than just a pretty map on the
wall. County officials aren't technical enough to know the difference
between having people that work for them with the GIS software and
having an actual working GIS. The way they see it, as long as a map can
be produced - they have a GIS. What you can pull from DASC right now
for Kiowa County just isn't enough to produce something that is needed
in the time of emergency. We proved that DASC needs more local county
data."
"I want everybody to understand that ˜storing offsite' doesn't mean
storing over at the local bank; you need to be storing off at another
county," said McMurry. "But, if you don't have any data, it wasn't
there in the first place. And if you do backup your data, putting that
backup CD down at the local bank obviously won't do any good if the
bank is blown away too."
"What people need to understand is that every document needs to be
scanned and put on some kind of media and stored somewhere," continued
Hardesty. "It's a must, because how that building [the courthouse]
stood is amazing, with most of its contents intact inside." Both
Hardesty and McMurry assisted in boxing up documents and other items
from the courthouse, including the rack with the mylar tax maps they
had scanned. The temporary Kiowa County Courthouse has been set up in
nearby Mullinville, about 10 miles away.
Discussion has already begun related to creating a type of "mobile
mapping center" that can quickly respond in the event of an emergency
such as Greensburg experienced. Hardesty had a suggestion on the proper
way to operate a mapping center: "You need to keep the people to a
minimum," he said. "Five people max to do what we [McMurry and
Hardesty] were doing, including two GIS-trained mapping technicians
sitting there, and their only job is to make maps." People (emergency
services, federal officials, etc.) can then come over to the center and
request maps for their specific needs.
"But, it goes further than that; people need to first be familiar with
what data they have available and provide whatever they have to DASC.
DASC can be relaying what information is available. We know what DASC
has, but only what is made public, and we use it on a regular basis.
DASC can stay there; they can get the data ready to give out; they
don't need to get out on the disaster site. If it's data that's not
accessible to the public, somebody needs to be there in Lawrence so
they can put it out on an FTP site, email, DVD, etc.," said Hardesty.
"I just don't understand why there isn't more reciprocation between our
counties, our cities and DASC," McMurry said. "Cities might say they're
˜mapped", but what does "mapped" mean? Does that mean that you have
mylar tax maps hanging in an office, or does that mean you actually
have a working (and up-to-date) GIS? You know, you can store your data
on DASC; they won't give it out unless you want them to. That's why
DASC is there and if there would have been Kiowa County data, it would
have been available almost immediately for us to use."
|
Your Comments Post a comment All comments provided in this section are those of the individual who has created the post. These are not the opinions of Directions Media, its editors, staff or owners unless otherwise noted. Directions Media retains the right to edit or delete any comments posted herein.
|
|
||||||
| I just saved the PDF article, but haven't studied it yet. But this is really cool to a Geography major & map nut! I'd like to know if anyone knows anyone who can help me persuade Greensburg leaders they must include tornado-resistant construction [http://www.geocities.com/maiinganikan/] in the rebuild. I sent info & offer to Steve Hewitt 2 days after, and am being ignored. |
||||||
|
||||||
| What a lot of work to write the article. We are pleased that you take such an interest in such things. Love, Mom |
||||||
|
||||||
| I was so depressed when i had found out that Greensburg and along there was hit by a tornado. I would of liked to help rebuild, so i donated some of my food and clothing to them I would like some more pictures. |
||||||
