2007 Colorado blizzard relief

Colorado West Division reaches out to blizzard-stricken ranchers

By Lanelle Krueger
Colorado West Division

For ranchers in an eight-county area in rural southeast Colorado, 2007 arrived with an unforgettable vengeance in the way of a four-day blizzard, leaving four feet of snow and eight-foot high drifts in its wake. The storm knocked out power for days in some areas, rendered roads impassable and put an estimated 345,000 head of cattle at risk. Thankfully, no major injuries or deaths were reported from the storm, which caught some people unprepared given the unpredictability of nature and uncertain weather forecasting in the Rocky Mountains region.

Emergency management agencies quickly rallied to assist ranchers in getting hay to their isolated cattle stranded in deep snow across the 16,000 square-mile territory that is home to 76,000 residents. Using both ground and air resources, including eight helicopters and a C-130 aircraft, approximately 150 National Guard troops delivered hundreds of bales of hay to cattle and horses in the first three days of the year, according to a National Guard press release.

The Colorado Cattlemen’s Association (CCA) headquartered in Arvada, Colo., estimated up to 15,000 head of cattle, valued at $13 to $15 million, perished from the storm, according to Terry Fankhauser, CCA executive vice president.

When the leadership committee of the Colorado West Division of Orphan Grain Train convened its regular monthly meeting Jan. 9th at Peace Lutheran Church in Arvada, two blocks from the CCA office, the plight of the ranchers was on the mind of Division President Lou Boette. “They were hurting,” he said, “and we wanted to do something.”

Without fanfare and in humility characteristic of the committee, a motion was made and seconded to send $2,000 into the area and it passed unanimously. The donation, restricted to help the ranchers, was then routed through the disaster response office at OGT’s International Office in Norfolk, Nebr., to the CCA.

Fankhauser said all restricted gifts were used for their intended purposes. None of the money coming in, designated or otherwise, went to overhead, he said, explaining that an application review process was established to channel monetary aid directly to the ranchers suffering loss. “We let them know where those donations came from start to finish,” he said, noting OGT would have been on the list of donors.

At the time of the blizzard, the CCA did not have as part of its mission a disaster response component. “We do now,” Fankhauser said, explaining that the CCA, Colorado Farm Bureau and Colorado Livestock Association have together set up a permanent revolving fund for future disaster response “to be more efficient and effective right then and there.” Undesignated funds donated to the three organizations in the aftermath of the blizzard were pooled to establish the fund.

Fankhauser noted that ongoing ancillary impacts on the ranching community would include dealing with property damage, fence repair, carcass disposal, a less than optimal calving season and cattle weakened with sickness. “It took a quarter of the year to work through everything to get their feet back on the ground,” he said of the ranchers. The CCA was still locating hay for people into March and dead cattle were being discovered as the last of the snow receded. Luckily, the melt was fairly slow, so residual flooding was not an issue, Fankhauser said. The silver lining once past the destruction brought on by the storm, he continued, was that “when we came to spring, the grass was green and the cattle became fat over the summer.”

“We were very appreciative of your organization,” Fankhauser said, adding that such generosity at the time gave the ranchers a “ray of hope” when it was needed.