We drove through campus last night and by the time the EF4 tornado had reached K-State, it must have weakened considerably. The path of destruction was fairly narrow (a block or so) and much of campus was untouched. The SAE house has a pitched rafter frame rebuilt and a temporary tarp roof stretched over it.
The entire campus spent last week cleaning up and things look much better than in the initial pictures. While the damage is considerable, I was relieved to see that it was limited. The old limestone buildings stood up well. There was lots of window, roof and tree damage, still a fair amount of debris (it is eerie to insulation hanging from trees!) but it's nothing like the "nuclear aftermath" pictures you saw after Greensburg. It still looks like the campus I love.
The Midwest has certainly had its share of natural disasters this year. We had a HUGE ice storm last December that covered dozens of KS counties and Manhattan was the epicenter. It occurred during finals week and there were thousands of people without power for days. Manhattan was also hit with baseball size hail the week before the tornado. My daughter's freshman roommate is from China and she keeps asking if all this is normal!!
Our thoughts and prayers currently go out to those at the University of Iowa. How sickening to watch the waters just keep rising. I hope the crest is lower than predicted and that the sandbagging helps!
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