Grain Journal - January/February 2009 - (Page 36) Tornado Survivor KANSAS ELEVATOR REBUILT AFTER F5 STORM FLATTENS ENTIRE TOWN KANSAS Greensburg Southern Plains Cooperative Lewis, KS • 620-324-5536 Founded: 1902 Storage capacity: 5 million bushels at six locations Annual volume: 7 million bushels Annual revenues: $46-55 million Number of members: 857 Number of employees: 44 Crops handled: Corn, soybeans, sorghum, hard red winter wheat Services: Grain handling and merchandising, feed, agronomy, fuel Key personnel at Greensburg: • Ron Gruber, general manager • Danny McLarty, branch manager • Alan Allison, superintendent • Keith Brown, fertilizer manager • Sherry Hall, office manager • Deb Wyrick, office • Greg Price, fertilizer/elevator • Mike Unruh, feed mill • Steve Gardner, fertilizer • Sam Kuhns, fertilizer • Rex Smith, propane Supplier List Aeration fans Tiernan Aeration Bin sweeps Valleywide Bucket elevators Frisbie Construction Co. Inc., InterSystems Catwalk Frisbie Concrete tank builder McPherson Concrete Storage Systems Contractor Frisbie Distributor Schlagel Inc. Dust filters MAC Equipment Inc. Elevator buckets Tapco Inc. Engineering Frisbie Grain dryer Delux Mfg. Co. Leg belting Rubber Belting & Hose Millwright Frisbie Motors Toshiba Speed reducers Dodge Surge tanks .. Imperial Systems Inc. Tower support system .. Frisbie Southern Plains Cooperative’s 1.7-million-bushel grain elevator at Greensburg, KS, largely rebuilt after a May 4, 2007 tornado destroyed everything but the concrete structures. Photos by Stan Reimer Photography Ltd., Pratt, KS. Ron Gruber, former general manager of Southern Plains Cooperative in Lewis, KS, will never forget the night of May 4, 2007. “It was a stormy night, and we had lost electricity around 10 p.m., so I went to bed,” Gruber recalls. “The phone rang around 11, and one of our employees called to say the elevator at Greensburg (about 25 miles to the south) had gotten hit pretty hard. Several Lewis employees and I went down there right away.” “Hit pretty hard” was an understatement. State troopers had blocked the main highways into Greensburg, but Gruber was 36 GJ J/F
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