Erik L. Ness,
Editorial Director,
New Mexico Farm and Ranch

If Al Gore’s big movie about alleged “global warming” had been showing at the Luna Theater in Clayton, New Mexico recently there would have been a sparse audience. That’s because people in the surrounding area couldn’t get to town through the 20 foot snow drifts. New Years weekend brought one of the biggest “snow events” in the history of the state over the northern half of New Mexico dropping 50 inches of heavy powder in some places in Union and surrounding counties. Combine that with the following “wind event” and 20 foot drifts were part of the endless white landscape. However, about the only way you could see them was from the air. Therein lies one of the dilemmas of “Blizzard 06-07″

When the sun sort of came up in Albuquerque Friday, December 29th it was obvious that it had been snowing all night in the Duke City. Watching the weather news on local TV convinced me to power-pack and make a run for Las Cruces in the more southern climes of the state. I made it out to 1-25 before the state started shutting down the major interstates including the heavily traveled I-40 from Gallup to Amarillo. An ice rodeo of gargantuan proportions was developing on every major road in northeast New Mexico.

Cascades of Calls

Our first indication of how serious this storm was came when we made the decision to activate a N.M. Farm & Livestock Bureau hotline for ranchers to call if they had stranded livestock or they were themselves stranded in one of the nation’s most remote areas. This is a service for agricultural producers we’ve used before with excellent results. Not to mention we thought the information would be valuable for the folks at the State Emergency Operations Center (EOC) in Santa Fe. And while we were concerned about our members and their animals, in these situations everyone is a Farm Bureau member in our book.

After contacting the network television affiliates in Albuquerque and Amarillo, our hotline number as added to the informational “crawl” at the bottom of the screen. The hotline phone started ringing immediately and didn’t stop for eight days. The initial avalanche of calls reflected an understandable panic when ranch families realized their animals stuck miles from the headquarters, in deep snow, most likely with no feed or water. Our intention was to record every message and attempt to return every call– if just briefly–to let folks know that we were listening, concerned and working with state officials to mitigate the problem as soon as we could. In retrospect, the effort to return the calls in a virtual telephonic triage, was the exact right thing to do. Folks needed to receive information and they wanted to tell us about their plight. Every single one of them thanked us for calling and said they appreciated Farm Bureau trying to be of assistance. We learned that there may be a better, more efficient way to conduct such a hotline in future disaster footings, but in the end it all worked out and folks were glad to hear a human voice calling them back.

Being “The Voice of Agriculture in the Land of Enchantment” we also wanted to let the people in the EOC know what we were finding out and how serious the situation was. This was a methodical process in that they had their hands full with thousands of cars and trucks (with people in them) stuck on Interstate 40 between Albuquerque and Amarillo and thousands more stranded in Albuquerque and the small towns along the old Route 66.

It, in EOC vernacular, was a “life/safety” footing first and foremost as it should have been. At some point the N.M. Farm Bureau began participating in the twice daily EOC conference calls where the true picture of this bad boy blizzard was unfolding by the hour. The voice of the emergency coordinator Angel Fire noted that the town of 2,000 now had 12,000 tourists stuck there. Gasoline was in short supply and food in the town’s only grocery store rapidly running out. With the roads closed in and out, Angel Fire was cut off from the world until the mountain highways could be cleared. Where New Mexico lucked out, as opposed to Colorado, was that for the most part, the power and telephone service stayed on for the duration of the storm and its aftermath.

Hay Hawks to the Rescue

We couldn’t physically return every phone call, or send a bulldozer to a stuck ranch family, but we could remain steadfast in our request for assistance from the state highway department and the National Guard as soon as they were available. Time was running out for cattle and horses that had been out in this mess for more than four days by the time the bureaucrats returned from their long New Year’s weekend.

New Mexicans, rural and urban, can be proud of their Office of Emergency Management and the folks at the EOC. Being able to watch and listen to their operation first hand gave me a window to their professionalism and dedication. But the real heroes of this blizzard, in addition to the ranchers who helped themselves and their neighbors, are the hardworking men and women of the Army National Guard and the people operating the big equipment out on the highways in terrible conditions at all hours of the day and night.

As soon as it was possible, and the Interstates were moving again, the N.M. Governor’s Office, in response to our requests and inquiries from many elected officials, ordered National Guard Black Hawk helicopters into the air to assess the situation from on-high and to drop hay to stranded animals.

At some point in one of the conference calls I heard someone refer to the birds as “Hay Hawks,” which added a much needed moment of levity. And the name stuck.

After I got the call about the Black Hawks I was asked to come up with some ranches where hay drops were critical. There was of course no way the helicopters to get hay to all the ranchers who needed it. The area was just too immense…but we had to start somewhere. It was a surreal moment spreading out a state highway map on my kitchen table that was so old it had a picture of former Governor Bruce King on the back. Using the Santa Fe Airport as the launch point I took a ruler and ran it down to the Joe Chavez ranch north of Clines Corners. He had called several times and his despair was evident in his elderly voice. So I called him to get a vector to help the 5.9-million dollar military machine get to his headquarters. “Do you know where the sign for the Clines Corners Cafe is?” he asked me. “Maybe something bigger Mr. Chavez,” I replied relishing the pure innocence of his question. In the end the Guard flight crews, with help from district livestock inspectors, got hay to Mr. Chavez and many others. The Black Hawks are part of the 717th Medical Detachment and are based in Santa Fe. Pilots in this group have just returned from medi-vac missions in Kosovo and Afghanistan where their twin engine, versatile choppers rescued wounded American soldiers, in some cases under fire. The nick name for the unit is the Lobos.

Lessons Learned

Ranchers in the recesses of northeast New Mexico were not prepared to see this amount of moisture is such a telescoped time frame after enduring years of out-and-out drought. They weren’t totally prepared for this kind of event and that’s certainly understandable. However, I bet they are now. They also knew the calvary, in the form of the federal government, was not going to ride over the hill to help. They knew they were on their own for the most part and went about figuring out how to get to their cattle, horses, goats and sheep. In an emergency situation like this the first priority was to get the main and secondary roads cleared and that took a lot of time and effort.

The Media Matters

We know that “agriculture” as a subject for the evening news is not at the top of the list for TV news assignment editors and news directors. However we also know from past experience that when ranchers and farmers face disastrous floods, fire and blizzards, the print and broadcast media across this state are the first ones to offer their assistance. On behalf of the farmers, ranchers and rural people of this state we say a heartfelt thanks to you and your news organizations. TV news helicopters provided key reconnaissance information to those who needed it at critical times.

One of the great stories of this storm involved as road-grader, a cowboy, a news helicopter and some pure enterprise reporting. During the height of this crisis, N.M. Farm Bureau Executive Vice President, John Wortman, came down the hall to my office with an idea. We were talking to a gentlemen in Des Moines who had a private grader that could clear a lot of road but he could not get to it because of the snow drifts. The state folks were concerned that using a state police chopper might violate the “anti-donation” clause, and it was on stand-by for medical emergencies. I called a producer at KRQE-News 13 in Albuquerque and pitched her the idea that if they could give Ronnie Rigoni a lift to his blade I’d bet they would also get a great story. In no time KRQE’s longtime pilot and reporter, Bob Martin, and reporter Addie Knowlton, were in route to the frozen tundra of Union County which includes 1.8 million acres of rangeland. The plan worked to perfection and KRQE’s Sky Ranger picked up a grateful passenger and dropped Mr. Rigoni off at his machine (see cover photo). He spent the next 23 hours straight–and subsequent days–clearing key roads for his neighbors. Des Moines area rancher, Raymond Rivale, who was a great source of information for us throughout the blizzard and its aftermath, said it best. “Nobody’s asking for a check…they help each other. We’re not asking for money, we just want to survive.”

Today, officials up in the Union County area report that some cattle are being found dead but it looks like most of them made it through. We won’t know until the snow melts but the efforts to punch roads through, deliver hay and assess the situation from the air paid off this time around.

There were some light moments and inspiring scenes during the tense days and nights of constant phone work. In addition to talking to ranchers we were also working with many media outlets covering this story. Part of that job is to monitor the coverage locally, statewide and nationally. A report on one of the networks really nailed the whole situation. The crew was interviewing a pretty cowgirl who had left the ranch for the city life but had returned to help her dad at their Colorado ranch during this storm. As the camera zoomed in on her face, tears streaked down her cheeks as she described the family’s love for their animals. There’s no amount of PR work that could tell that story better to the people in Denver and America.

Directions and Measurements

The fact that these family ranchers care for their animals was the lead story to me in this incident. The sidebar stories included these producers using their ingenuity and grit to help themselves because no federal agency is going to help them. I also noticed in the many phone calls that ranchers have unique ways of measuring snowfall and snow on the ground. Without going into detail one method that seemed to work, when we’d ask how deep the snow was at their particular location, was the rancher’s propensity to explain snow depth by relating it to various body parts. “Its up to your___.” You fill in the blank. And it really gave an accurate picture when put in those terms.

Several days into this storm I was working on getting a Black Hawk to a ranch just outside a small New Mexico community. I asked the rancher for a vector for the chopper so he could locate the ranch headquarters. “Do you know where the Sonic is?” He asked.

“Lobo-Seven-One-Three proceed to the Sonic Drive In and turn left…the house is just past the railroad tracks…..”

You can’t make this stuff up.

(EPILOGUE) Rancher Rivale reports things are still tough up in that country and he went up to Denver in bought a 4-wheel drive back-hoe for the next time.

Estimates of dead cattle are trickling in—we many never know the complete story.

Everyone got out of this alive thanks to the EOC, the State DOT, the National Guard Lobos and ranchers helping ranchers.

And….Raymond Rivale is the newest member of the New Mexico Farm and Livestock Bureau in appreciation for Farm Bureau’s attention to their plight when the snow of a lifetime was dumping on Des Moines.