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Residents battle blizzard together
Icy snow driven by raging north winds threatened the health and safety of anyone who ventured outside on the Golden Plains Sunday and Monday.
In Jennings, however, even those snuggled in their own homes faced cold and isolation when the electricity went off about 7:30 p.m., Sunday. But the community of 100 or so pulled together, and took care of their own and anyone else who happened along.
A medical emergency and a pending C-section became community concerns, said Marge Hartzog of Jennings.
Hartzog said a shelter was set up at the Jennings senior center Sunday evening, and village board member Louise Cressler took it upon herself to see that everyone in town was accounted for.
"Our mayor, Bob Jones, made coffee for everyone, and Louise called everybody in town," Marge said. Generators from the fire department and space heaters volunteered by residents kept everyone warm, she said.
"We're a real close-knit community," Marge said. People without heat at their homes in or near Jennings came to the shelter and spent the night and next day among friends.
"We've even got more community people coming here today because they're tired of being home alone," she said.
Hartzog said the mother of a 15-month-old who has a C-section delivery of her second baby planned Dec. 1 spent the day in the shelter, and then she and her husband and child were driven to the Norton hospital Sunday evening. "We may have been able to deliver a baby," Marge said, but potential complications of the woman's second delivery made it necessary to get her to a hospital, Marge said, "just in case."
EMTs were able to reach a Dresden woman, who fell and broke her hip, when a neighbor on his tractor plowed roads from the south and the county maintainer plowed roads from the north to get EMT's in and deliver the woman to the hospital.
At Dresden, rescuers encountered a 12-foot drift. "Everyone agrees we got more than 6 inches of snow," Marge said, but it's hard to measure snow blown horizontal by deranged north winds. "The wind was horrendous," she said. "It was a really bad scene."
Phone lines are down in parts of the county and also in parts of Jennings, so, Hartzog said, neighbors venturing out to check on their cattle today will check on a fellow neighbor who has been without phone service.
Volunteers traveling in teams of two have plucked stranded travelers off the highways and roads and brought them to the shelter. "We're traveling in pairs," Marge said. "No one goes out alone."
Jennings residents have brought in food, blankets, air mattresses and kerosene lamps and heaters. The owner of the Jennings grocery store has shared the food she had prepared for her lunch counter.
"This has been a real community effort," Marge said, chocking back tears of pride and thankfulness. "We're real big on community spirit."
Carol Bridgman, dispatcher for the McCook Police Department, said her office received about 200 calls for assistance during the blizzard that pounded Southwest Nebraska and Northwest Kansas for two days.
Police officers and medical personal have worked round-the-clock to respond to traffic and medical emergencies.
Kyle Potthoff, McCook's public works superintendent, said his crews were out by 4 a.m., Monday, removing snow and spreading gravel. Cleanup continues today.
City streets designated as "snow routes" are the department's first priority, Potthoff said, along with the schools, the airport and Community Hospital.
Ten plow trucks were out in force Monday, and crews will begin to remove the snow and haul it to the Jaycee Ballpark and southeast of the airport, he said.
Although snow routes have been salted, sunshine is needed to activate the process, Potthoff said. Some intersections have been graveled as well, but, he said, "We can't salt and gravel everything." Yet, residents can call his office, 345-2022, if they feel an area is particularly hazardous, he said.
Potthoff said his crews have done an excellent job with the snow removal in town.
Hitchcock County Sheriff D. Bryan Leggott said his officers investigated four accidents Sunday morning on U.S. Highways 34 and 6-34. In one accident, 23-year-old Maria Kline of Stratton lost control of her pickup on the icy road and struck a guard rail about half a mile west of Trenton. No one was injured.
Officers helped with three other accidents, Leggott said, and any number of requests for towing after vehicles stalled or slid off roads into ditches.
Even as bad as it was Sunday and Monday, people thinking the worst was over got a rude awakening today when they encountered ice under the snow, and cars, pickups and trucks crosswise on the roads.
The dispatcher for the sheriff's department in Frontier County said early this morning that conditions may not be any better today despite the sunshine, with ice under the snow on streets and driveways and deep drifts across streets and roads.
She also said they're waiting for wreckers to remove trucks stuck across roads east and west of Curtis.
Jean Pachner, dispatcher for the Decatur County Sheriff's Department, said this morning the worst part of the storm was the number of people stranded on roads and highways. "Semis were sliding off the highways," Pachner said.
Travelers through the county were housed and fed by volunteers in emergencies shelters at the Gateway Civic Center in Oberlin and in the education building Norcatur.
Pachner said she was aware of one accident, north of Oberlin on Highway 83, during the two-day storm, and one ambulance that encountered bad road conditions en route to McCook.
City crews were at the airport this morning clearing the runway so an airplane could land to take another patient to a hospital.
The snowstorm that pounded Southwest Nebraska and Northwest Kansas Sunday and Monday caused sporadic power outages in the area, but Brian Buhr of Nebraska Public Power District said the problems were resolved fairly quickly in the McCook area.
Buhr said his office began to get calls Sunday night, with his crews going out by 2 a.m. to check on lines. Freezing rain and high wind were not a good mix, he said, but a lot of time spent this year on a tree-trimming program paid off during this storm.
Power outages continued through Monday on the east side of McCook, but they were brought under control by noon.
Although ice-covered "galloping wires" were a problem in a few areas, Buhr said, crews in McCook are "doing what we have to do to clean up."