Talking with Steve Hewitt, city manager of Clinton, who was the city administrator in Greensburg, Kan. when an EF-5 hit there in 2007

In Clinton, city manager Steve Hewitt could identify all too well with the destruction he was seeing on television left by the tornado outbreak this week. Hewitt was city administrator of Greensburg, Kan. when an EF-5 tornado struck that city May 4, 2007.

“When I saw the images on the television yesterday and today, it just brought back an eerie feeling, it looked all too familiar,” Hewitt said today. “It doesn’t even seem like that could actually happen, but it does.”

He said to him it looked like the same photographs taken at Greensburg. That tornado in Kansas claimed 13 lives. About 95 percent of the city of  Greensburg was left in ruin.

“I think at this point in time you have really got to rely on your faith, your friends and family,” he said.

“You have to mourn, you have to go through these emotions. There’s all levels of emotions.

“There will be the emotions of people coming and helping from outside, but you’ve got to really rely on your internal mechanism of people that are in that community friends and family and faith-based community.

“Those will be the people you will always  have to draw to, now, 10 days from now, 6 months from now, 2 years from now. Hand-in-hand you’ll have to rebuild your community, and together you have to get through this emotionally.”

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