Tornado Damage Investigation, Greensburg, Kansas, 1699 DR-KS

The Tornado Damage Investigation, Greensburg, Kansas, 1699 DR-KS is a report created by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in October 2007, which was formally released to the public in December 2024 from a Freedom of Information Act request for the previously uncirculated document. The FEMA case study also discovered that the modern building codes established for Greensburg would have provided protection to structures for nearly all EF3 or lower-rated tornadoes. The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, while discussing the FEMA report, noted that the outer edge of tornadoes will have lower EF-scale ratings. They also stated that "tornado-prone areas, need windborne debris protection because of numerous high speed missiles".
Citations
Despite the report being publicly released for the first time in December 2024, several researchers saw and cited the document prior to its release.
*In August 2008, Timothy P. Marshall, with Haag Engineering, along with Daniel McCarthy and James LaDue with the National Weather Service, conducted a damage survey of the Greensburg EF5 tornado. In the damage survey report later published by Marshall, it was acknowledged that FEMA conducted their own independent survey from the National Weather Service's team.
*In 2012, the FEMA report was cited in the Japanese academic journal Wind Engineers, JAWE.
*In May 2013, several meteorologists from the National Weather Service, including Roger Edwards published a paper to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, where they acknowledged that FEMA conducted a damage survey.

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