Livestock At Risk In Snowbound Plains
Volunteers on snowmobiles joined a National Guard airlift to feed snowbound cattle Wednesday, fanning out across rural roads and range to find animals stranded on the eastern Colorado plains by back-to-back holiday blizzards.
Eight Guard helicopters and a C-130 were dispatched Wednesday in the campaign to save thousands of cattle stranded for days and in danger of starving because they can't get through the snow to grass and water.
Soldiers delivered about 500 bales of hay Tuesday, aided by area ranchers who helped locate cattle and estimate the number of bales needed for each group, Maj. Gen. Mason Whitney said Wednesday.
"You can tell immediately where they are," Whitney said. "You'll see a bunch of dark spots clustered together in a sea of white."
Volunteer snowmobile search and rescue groups from elsewhere in the state joined in the effort, scouting for stranded animals, said Dan Hatlestad, spokesman in an interagency operations center.
Also, with so much of the National Guard deployed to the Middle East, there is a shortage of equipment, reports CBS News correspondent Kelly Cobiella.
A true count of how many cattle have died and how much damage is done will not be known until the snow finally melts, Cobiella reports.
The snowstorms dumped snow and sculpted drifts 10 feet deep and more in southeastern Colorado, shutting down travel, stranding hundreds in their cars over the New Year's weekend, and trapping thousands of cows.
The storm stretched from New Mexico to North Dakota at its height, and on Wednesday, utilities in sections of Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Colorado worked restore electricity to tens of thousands of homes and businesses.
The main highways and roads in the rural region were open Wednesday, and the Guard believes all of the stranded motorists have been rescued, Whitney said.
The Colorado National Guard's seven helicopters were being supplemented Wednesday with an eighth helicopter from Oklahoma and the larger C-130 plane from the Wyoming National Guard, expected to arrive later in the day.
Ten traffic deaths were blamed on the latest storm in Colorado, Texas and Minnesota. A tornado spun off by the same weather system killed one person in Texas, and a Kansas sheriff's deputy died in his home after falling down the stairs while tending to a generator.
With rising temperatures, highways were generally clear, but many rural roads remained impassable. National Guard helicopters dropped Meals Ready to Eat, or military rations, outside remote houses, where the nearest neighbor might be miles away. The Guard also ferried in food, water and medicine on Humvees and snowmobiles and provided rides out for those in need.
"It's the middle of nowhere. You lose the power, you might as well be in 1885," said Sgt. 1st Class Steve Segin said. "There's no cell phone, no lights, no contact."
The Guard in Colorado reached at least 280 homes Tuesday.
Officials hope the haylift will save thousands of cattle immobilized by drifts as high as 10 feet. In 1997, a similar storm killed 30,000 in the state.
Getting food to stranded cattle is key to protecting the region's economic lifeblood, said agricultural extension agent Leonard Pruett. Up to $1.8 billion in cattle are on the line, most of them breeding cows that will produce next year's crop of beef cattle.
Trapped by snow, cattle can become dehydrated and gravitate to creeks, where they might stumble into deep drifts and die.
Army National Guard crew chief Nick Cornelius, back from a hay drop Wednesday, explained how dropping a 75-pound bale of hay 200 feet to a cow struggling in a snowdrift requires a fair degree of precision, Army National Guard crew chief Nick Cornelius Cornelius said.
"You try not to hit them," he said.
In the Oklahoma Panhandle and western Kansas, National Guard troops and local law enforcement went door to door to check on people who had been without power for several days. People who might have medical problems were a priority, said Oklahoma National Guard spokesman Col. Pat Scully.
Ice in some areas was even more problematic than the snow, snapping trees and bringing down power lines. In Nebraska, big portable generators were set up to maintain water service and keep shelters open.
More than a dozen Kansas radio stations were forced off the air due to equipment icing.
In an aerial tour, Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman said Tuesday that he saw damage "more massive and more extensive than any of us imagined," noting that in some areas ice was 3 inches thick on trees. Heineman had declared a state of emergency before the storm struck.
At least 21,000 customers in western Kansas were without power, as were at least 29,000 customers in Nebraska and more than 6,000 in Colorado and Oklahoma. Utility officials warned it could take weeks to restore electricity in some areas.
In the western Nebraska town of Kearney, Patrick Keough, 49, was one of 10 people in his family sharing three rooms at the Ramada Inn. There was no power at his house east of Kearney or at his shop, where he makes fiberglass animals for advertising.
"Hardly anybody got any snow," Keough said. "It's all just ice. Even the gravel roads are a sheet of ice, because the gravel is below the level of the ice. I've never seen that in my life."