Local trucker caught in Greensburg tornado

On May 4, Larry Riley, an over-the-road truck driver for OIX, Inc., was driving west down U.S. 54 heading out to Pomona, Calif., with a load of flour. As he approached Greensburg, Kansas, heavy black clouds loomed as a severe storm drew near. Driving through Greensburg, the wind started howling, so Riley decided to pull into a convenience store at the west edge of town. He pulled his rig between two other 18-wheelers in order to block some of the ferocious wind. Riley, still unaware that a tornado was on the ground approaching Greensburg, backed his truck up about 20 feet behind the two trucks on either side and climbed into the bunk area behind the driver’s cab. “Then it hit,” Riley said. “I’m 63, and I thought that was it. I thought it [death] was going to happen. I sat there three to four minutes just shaking.”

The wind blew all the glass out of Riley’s truck. It was so strong that it hurled one of the trailers that was beside him up over the hood of his truck; leaving it leaning against Riley’s rig.

The convenience store faced 54 Highway and the lot where Riley and the other’s parked their trucks was facing west towards a motel.

“I saw the motel go. It just blew away,” he said. “The whole town was gone.”

Several people in the area, including the drivers of the trucks sandwiching his own, sought shelter in the walk-in cooler at the convenience store. The convenience store was leveled, but the cooler remained. Two people were unable to make it to the cooler before the tornado hit and were among the storm’s victims, he said.

Within thirty minutes emergency vehicles from all over the area began arriving. They set up a command post, and began evacuating the citizens of Greensburg. They then began the horrific task of searching for survivors and victims.

“All of those people need to be commended,” Riley said of the emergency workers.

Riley remained in the bunk area of his truck that night. In the morning, he ventured out. “It was the darndest sight I’ve ever seen,” he said.

Riley walked a few blocks taking photographs of the mass damage until a law enforcement officer informed him he would have to evacuate. He and the 50 to 60 other people still left in the town were taken to nearby Pratt, Kan.

Riley, who was born and raised in Raytown, graduating from Raytown High School in 1962, said that it was a little coincidental that he even ended up in Greensburg. It was about two months earlier that he had witnessed a truck accident on the two-lane 54 that left three dead. At the time, he said he would never travel that route again. But he did on May 4.

- The Raytown Post -