Bush pays visit to devastated Kansas town

GREENSBURG, Kan. – President Bush turned the corner Wednesday afternoon at Lincoln and Bay streets in what until last week had been a tidy residential neighborhood of one-story Cape Cod-style houses. He headed toward what had been the home of Kaye and Dave Hardinger, now a gutted red-brick shell.

In the front yard, a giant crane stood, an American flag flying atop it. The family’s camper was wrapped around a tree in the backyard. A toolbox had settled upside down in another tree.

Bush stopped for a few minutes to tell the Hardingers how sorry he was for their losses. Kaye Hardinger said she told the president she wanted to invite him in for coffee, “but I didn’t have time to dust.”

Bush spent a little more than three hours in Greensburg, about 130 miles west of Wichita, bringing what he termed the “prayers and concerns of the people of this country” five days after one of the most vicious tornadoes in recent memory had struck. At least 11 people were killed, and much of this farm town of about 1,500 residents was destroyed.

The president took a brief helicopter tour to get an aerial view of the damage, but only his walking tour could provide a full sense of the devastation left by the storm: block after block of leveled houses, trees with branches and tops sheared off, and mounds of debris as far as the eye could see.

The visit was aimed at showing the president and the federal government leading an effective response to a terrible natural disaster, in contrast to the bungled response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. But while the president and his aides said the trip was intended to show compassion, the administration could not escape the shadow of Iraq. Questions were raised this week by Kansas’ Democratic governor, Kathleen Sebelius, about the readiness of the National Guard to assist here given its extensive deployments to the war zone.

Sebelius said Monday that the response to the storm would be slower because much of the National Guard’s equipment was stationed overseas. After two days of tit-for-tat with the White House, Sebelius seemed to back off her criticisms Wednesday – but only up to a point. In an interview as she walked with the president in Greensburg, Sebelius said that the federal response had been “very prompt and very good” and that there had been an effective deployment of about 400 Guard troops and other assets to help with the cleanup.

But Sebelius, who raised concerns with Bush about Guard readiness when he visited Kansas about a year ago, said she remains concerned about handling another natural disaster – not an insignificant possibility in Kansas, she noted.

“I will be in a situation where we have to choose what we do – and that’s a terrible choice to make,” she said. “After four years (of war), there’s no question that year after year Guard supplies are depleted not just in Kansas but all over the country.”

Bush took no questions as he toured Greensburg, ignoring a shouted query about Guard readiness. He said his mission was “to lift people’s spirits as best as I possibly can and to hopefully touch somebody’s soul by representing our country.”