Colorado Post-Blizzard Haylift
Public-Private Co-op Effort

By David Bowser

LAMAR, Colo. — The popping sound of a UH-1 "Huey" helicopter could be heard overhead, but this wasn’t the opening scene of MASH on television nor a hot landing zone in a steamy jungle in Vietnam. Indeed, the LZs were cold, white and bleak. But the helicopters were on a lifesaving mission.

The Colorado National Guard helicopters hovered over deep snow following the first blizzard of the season across the southeastern part of the state as crew members kicked out bales of hay to stranded cattle.

As several feet of snow dropped on the region, whipped by winds of up to 60 miles an hour the last weekend of October, Prowers County Sheriff Jim Hamilton and his crew first concentrated on rescuing stranded motorists and reaching outlying ranches. By late Sunday, it was apparent that cattle in the area were also in danger. Hamilton and county commissioners began working with area ranchers to organize a bovine rescue effort. Pressure was brought to bear on state agencies, and by Monday morning a hay drop was being organized.

"The commissioners had gotten some requests to assist the ranchers here in Prowers County, so they made calls to the ag department and got Brad Young, our state representative, involved," says Marvin Rosencrans, Prowers County Fire Chief.

The blizzard was the worst one Prowers County Commissioner Leroy Mauch says he had seen in 50 years.

"After we got the stranded people picked up, some of the ranchers started hollering," Mauch says. "It was impossible to get to their cattle."

The governor had already declared an emergency and sent the Colorado National Guard with their helicopters.

"And we started feeding cattle," Mauch says. "We put the word out and started building a list of who had cattle and where and how many. We had to make sure we had the hay to feed them. The ranchers had to handle the cost of the hay."

The effort wound up involving six counties: Prowers, Baca, Bent, Kiowa, Crowley and Otero.

"We had one or two runs into Baca County," Rosencrans says. "The rest of them were in Prowers, Bent and Kiowa counties."

Coordinated out of the Lamar, Colo., airport, rescue officials say there were between 55 and 65 flights made by the National Guard helicopters to drop hay to some 9200 stranded cattle.

All the flight expenses were handled under the disaster program. The ranchers had to provide the hay.

"A lot of them didn't have baled hay," Rosencrans says. "They had big bales or rolls, so they had to buy hay, but that was the only expense they had. A lot of them had their own hay."

Kelly Spitzer, a grain trader in Lamar who is also on the state agricultural commission, helped get the state involved and rounded up some of the much-needed hay.

The effort extended from the local ranchers and officials in each of the counties affected all the way through the state government.

They started the drop Monday after the storm and worked through Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

Rosencrans was brought in to run the hay drop so Hamilton could return to other duties.

"He had a lot of things going, so I stepped in to coordinate it," Rosencrans says. "We were handling six counties. Some of it went down to Las Animas County, too."

Amid the chaos caused by the blizzard, the hastily put-together rescue effort was shaky on Monday when they first started.

"It was helter-skelter," Rosencrans says. "We went to a command system and tried to organize a little bit."

By Monday afternoon, they had three helicopters in the air shuttling hay to cattle. The helicopters hauled about 25 to 30 bales to the load.

"We'd find the cattle and kick it on either side," Mauch says. "We figured about seven cows to a bale. We dropped probably 60 to 65 loads. There were about 9240 cattle, I think I figured."

"It was one heckuva week," Rosencrans says in retrospect. "I was glad when it was over. It was hectic."

"We kind of had a list of people to start with, and we were trying to go by the list," Rosencrans says. "The helicopter would fly out to Hasty to pick up hay and ranchers would pull up with their hay, and they weren't on the list. They'd start loading ahead of guys that were on the list. We had to get some organization to it."

Despite the initial confusion faced in any disaster, the effort eventually came together.

"It went pretty good," Rosencrans says. "We had some problems, like not getting all the helicopters we wanted. We had one break down on its way down here. We had a few other things that happened, but all in all it went pretty good."

They had to do some fast talking on Wednesday.

"That was to be the last day," Rosencrans says. "We made some phone calls and got with the Office of Emergency Management and with Brad Young and got it extended a day. Probably, Thursday was our most productive day getting things done."

They got a fourth helicopter in for a while on Thursday, until it was called away to search for escaped convicts at the state penitentiary at Canon City.

"They pulled one out for that prison break," Rosencrans says. "We had one 'copter pull out about noon to go to that. So we lost one of our copters to it, but all in all it was one of our best days."

After spending the day coordinating flights at the airport in Lamar, Rosencrans would go home and get on the phone to talk to ranchers.

"A lot of people didn't even know where their cattle were," Rosencrans says.

Some ranchers showed up at the airport thinking the helicopters would take them out to look for their cattle, but there wasn't time. Local pilots donated their time in return for fuel to launch search missions.

"They had to have determined where their cattle were before we'd put them on the list," Rosencrans says. "We weren't using the helicopters to find the cattle."

"It was a hectic week, but we got a lot of cattle fed and saved a lot of them," Mauch says.

It would be a week later before ranchers driving four-wheel drive tractors with blades could start to cut a path out to their cattle.

"The snow was deep," Mauch says. "It was two or three foot on the level out in the open wheat fields or hay fields or grassland. The way the wind blew, I've never seen snow stick like that. We had drifts 12 to 15 feet deep. The snow on the level, there was so much and it was so wet, it had to stick, I guess."

The official snowfall at Lamar was 30 inches.

"I'll sure verify that," Mauch says. "I'd say we got three foot or better. My yard's still got four-foot drifts in it."

Mauch lives five miles north of Lamar on an irrigated farm.

"We've still got a lot of corn and a lot of milo in the field yet," he says. "We're hoping it will melt down and clear off so we can get it cut before Christmas. It's pretty flat on the ground. It'll be hard to pick up, but we have to try to do what we can."