Add Colorado snowmobile clubs to the National Guard and Civil Air Patrol to that list of stalwart friends who help those in need when blizzards strike.
The metro area dodged the worst effects of the second storm system to hammer Colorado in a week. But snowfalls up to 3 feet and high winds that piled drifts 10 feet high in southeastern Colorado threatened a disaster for Colorado agriculture that may rival the October 1997 storm that killed 26,000 cattle and cost ranchers more than $28 million.
Utility crews in four states struggled to restore electrical service even as state and local officials went all out to locate and rescue stranded travelers. More than 75,000 homes and businesses in western Kansas and Nebraska lost electricity during the storm, as did another 6,000 in Colorado and the Oklahoma Panhandle.
Civil Air Patrol pilots – those cool and courageous volunteers organized as a civilian auxiliary to the U.S. Air Force who give so unstintingly of their time and talents – proved especially skilled at finding stranded motorists, who were then rescued by Guard Humvees, snowmobilers, or other emergency vehicles. With the most urgent human problems addressed, attention focused this week on distressed livestock.
“These cattle have already gone a number of days without food and water. They’re just going to lay over dead if we don’t do something soon,” Don Ament, executive director of the Department of Agriculture, warned Tuesday.
Many of the National Guard cargo helicopters normally assigned to Colorado are now deployed in the Middle East, Ament said, and thus not available for the kind of hay drops that eased the blow of the 1997 storm on cattle. Likewise, some Guard units that deployed Vietnam-era Huey helicopters in 1997 now use Blackhawks. While packing more power in combat, the newer choppers aren’t as useful for hauling cargo such as hay bales, some of which weigh up to 1,300 pounds.
That’s where the volunteer efforts by snowmobilers, who rallied from throughout Colorado, proved so welcome. Snowmobilers joined the available cargo helicopters Tuesday to haul hay on sleds to stranded livestock. CAP spotter planes helped by locating groups of cattle and directing rescuers to the distraught animals.
The sheer size of the blizzard inevitably overstretched the resources of the sparsely populated southeastern Colorado counties. But a mix of sound emergency planning by state and local officials and the superb response by public-spirited groups like the CAP and the snowmobile clubs at least eased the impact of nature’s latest blow to Colorado.
