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Blizzard bravado
Coloradoans deal with the winter of the decade, but let's not kid ourselves - it was no Katrina
By Rich Stromberg, Feb. 8 2007
Photos by Angela Breckenridge and Rich Stromberg

(Editor’s note: This e-mail screams for a response. A fellow named Mike Leonard was the originator in the e-mail chain that I received, but there is no way to tell if Mr. Leonard is the author. An attempt to contact him via e-mail received no reply. What Colorado survived in December and January is indeed noteworthy, but with the exception of ranchers who have suffered major herd loses, the average citizen had it pretty easy. All italics and footnotes are my response.)

 

 

WEATHER BULLETIN --Denver

Up here, in the "Mile-Hi[1] City", we just recovered from a Historic[2] event---
may I even say a "Weather Event" of "Biblical Proportions"[3] --- with a
historic blizzard of up to 44" inches[4] of snow and winds to 90 MPH that
broke trees in half, knocked down utility poles, stranded hundreds of
motorists in lethal snow banks[5], closed ALL roads, isolated scores of
communities and cut power to 10's of thousands.

FYI:

George Bush did not come.[6]

FEMA did nothing.[7]

No one howled for the government.[8]

No one blamed the government.[9]

No one even uttered an expletive on TV.

Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton did not visit.[10]

Our Mayor did not blame Bush or anyone else.[11]

Our Governor did not blame Bush or anyone else, either.[12]

CNN, ABC, CBS, FOX or NBC did not visit[13] - or report on this category 5
snowstorm.[14] Nobody demanded $2,000 debit cards.[15]

No one asked for a FEMA Trailer House.[16]

No one looted.[17]

Nobody - I mean Nobody[18] demanded the government do something.

Nobody expected the government to do anything, either.[19]

No Larry King, No[20] Bill O'Rielly[21], No[22] Oprah, No[23] Chris Mathews[24] and No[25] Geraldo
Rivera.

No Shaun Penn, No[26] Barbara Striesand,[27] No Hollywood types to be found.[28]

Nope, we just melted the s now[29] for water.[30]

Sent out caravans of SUV's to pluck people out of snow engulfed cars. [31]

The truck drivers pulled people out of snow banks and didn't ask for a
penny.

Local restaurants made food and the police and fire departments[32] delivered
it to the snowbound families.[33]

Families took in the stranded people[34] - total strangers.

We fired up wood stoves, broke out coal oil lanterns[35] or Coleman lanterns.

We put on extra layers of clothes because up here it is "Work or Die".[36]

We did not wait for some affirmative action[37] government to get us out of a
mess created by being immobilized by a welfare program that trades votes
for 'sittin at home' checks.[38]

Even though a Category "5"[39] blizzard of this scale has never fallen this
early[40], we know it can happen and how to deal with it ourselves.[41]

"In my ma ny[42] travels,[43] I have noticed that once one gets north of about 48
degrees North Latitude, 90% of the world's social problems evaporate."[44][45]

It does seem that way, at least to me.[46]

I hope this gets passed on.[47]

Maybe SOME[48] people (Like NO[49] and Wash. DC freeloaders) will get the message.[50]
The world does Not[51] owe you a living. The Government[52] and Tax[53] $ are not your
insurance company.[54][55]

Okay, Mr. I survived a freakin' blizzard and Hurricane Katrina was the fault of poor people, let’s put things in perspective:

·        Katrina resulted in 1,833 deaths. This blizzard resulted in less than 10.

·        Around three-quarters of a million people were driven from their homes by Katrina.

·        Total losses for Katrina were $81 billion.

·        Your 44 inches of snow amounts to about four-and-a-half inches of water – none of which flooded any homes. New Orleans had eight or more feet of water that flooded homes for more than a month. Western Mississippi saw a storm surge of 24 feet. Homes were floated off their foundations.

·        Eighty percent of New Orleans was underwater.

·        Two-hundred thousand Gulf Coast homes were destroyed.

·        A year after Katrina hit, 17 percent of public transportation was running in New Orleans. I believe the buses and trains are all running in Denver now. All systems collapsed in New Orleans. All utilities were down. Food distribution, fuel distribution and banking systems were down for months.

·        It was summertime on the Gulf Coast with temperatures near 100 degrees and humidity around 90 percent. People were sweltering with no electricity. Extra layers of clothes and wood stoves come in handy up in Colorado, but there is no equivalent remedy in the south against sweltering heat.

·        A year after Katrina hit, only half of the hospitals were up and running in New Orleans and electricity had been restored to 60 percent of the homes.

·        Those people living in FEMA trailers actually want to live in their own homes.

 

Yes, Colorado survived two big back-to-back storms. We all have stories to share and will remember this winter for a long time. Ranchers are still using bulldozers to get hay to their cattle in my part of the state. But what we dealt with pales in comparison to what happened in the Gulf Coast. Might I make two suggestions?

1.      Rent and watch Spike Lee’s HBO documentary “When the Levees Broke.”

2.      Then go visit New Orleans to observe, meet people and learn first-hand what they lived through. I’ll be visiting sometime in early spring. Call me and we can walk some of the neighborhoods together.

__________________________________________________________________________

[1] Denver is officially known as the “Mile-High” city.

[2] Improper capitalization.

[3] Why the caps and why in quotes? Whom are you quoting?

[4] The quote marks and the word inches are redundant.

[5] If the snow banks were lethal, did they kill those hundreds of motorists?

[6] It was Christmas vacation. He was at his ranch in Crawford. No national state of emergency was declared, so he didn’t need to come.

[7] FEMA must be activated at the federal level. At the time of this e-mail, no federal disaster had been declared. Colorado’s two U.S. senators have worked with FEMA and the USDA to obtain disaster aid for farm and ranch losses on the eastern plains as well as to help reimburse all Front Range communities that incurred significant snow removal costs.

[8] They didn’t have to howl. Road crews and other emergency personnel were working around-the-clock to help people out. If those crews didn’t show up or had been incompetent, you would have heard plenty of howling. The grocery stores never ran out of food, although produce and dairy supplies were sparse at times.

[9] For the snow? Of course not.

[10] They didn’t have a need to visit. They were home enjoying the holidays with their families. Also, no one in Colorado had been charged with shooting an unarmed mentally retarded man in the back.

[11] He just said that the snow removal expense will be reflected in next year’s property tax bill.

[12] He declared a state of emergency and activated the National Guard, which fortunately was in state where they were able to perform their primary duties. Owens did a fine job, especially when you consider his term was almost up and it was the holiday season. He knows that this is one of those responsibilities that come with the job. I’m getting a hint of political agitation here. Is someone upset with how the November elections turned out?

[13] Which TV channels were you watching? They all reported on the storm. It was the top news story for several days. The main story was the 4,700 people stranded at DIA and the 10-foot drifts out east. The only reason news crews didn’t show up in your neighborhood is that no one was in dire straits -granted, you couldn’t get to the mall for the after-Christmas sales for a few days. 

[14] There’s no such thing. The National Weather Service doesn’t classify snowstorms the same way they classify hurricanes.

[15] No one incurred significant losses. The banking system wasn’t destroyed.

[16] Maybe that’s because no one’s house was destroyed. Ya think?

[17] I assume you’re referring to non-white people. We all know that white people simply forage for food and supplies. I doubt anyone cleaned their cupboards out in the four or five days of the storm and its aftermath. Besides, the snow was too deep to get to any place worth looting.

[18] Improper use of capitalization, plus you forgot the trailing hyphen.

[19] Actually they did expect the government do something. They expected that the city and county plow the roads.

[20] No caps.

[21] It’s O’Reilly.

[22] No caps. By the way, did you see where Zach and Ernie - the two teens who were featured in our lightning strike article - were guests on Oprah at the end of January?

[23] No caps.

[24] He’s Hardball. This was snowball.

[25] No caps.

[26] No caps, or put a period after Penn.

[27] It’s Streisand.

[28] They were all up at Vail and Aspen enjoying the snow as opposed to you who chooses to whine.

[29] Close up that space.

[30] Did you really? I hadn’t heard that the Denver municipal water supply was down.

[31] How did they get out? I thought you said all the roads were closed.

[32] Those are government entities, you know.

[33] These are the same people who didn’t have five days of food in their refrigerator and cupboards?

[34] So long as they didn’t look like terrorists.

[35] What the hell is a coal oil lantern?

[36] What the hell is that supposed to mean? If people didn’t work for a few days, how would they die?

[37] The term should be capitalized. Also, hyphenate since it is used as an adjective.

[38] What does a snowstorm have to do with the failures of our welfare system?

[39] Improper use of quotation marks. Also, there’s still no such think as a category-five snowstorm.

[40] Let me guess, you have lived in Colorado for less than 10 years. The winter season of ‘96/’97 dumped 54 inches of snow in Walsenburg over the Thanksgiving weekend.

[41] By patting ourselves on the back while we wait for city, county and National Guard crews to clear the roads.

[42] Close up that space, Maynord.

[43] Let me guess. You’ve traveled to the mall and the ski slopes.

[44] Who are you quoting? Yourself? Please attribute anything in quotation marks.

[45] Yep, those Scandinavians and Canadians have pretty good systems of government. You do realize that latitude 48 is around the Wyoming-Montana border – not Denver.

[46] And your expert credentials would be……?

[47] I hope it gets pissed on.

[48] No caps.

[49] I assume you mean New Orleans.

[50] Use a colon, rather than a period.

[51] Somebody take away this guy’s caps key. And get him a spell checker while you’re at it.

[52] No caps.

[53] No caps.

[54] You forgot to mention the insurance companies that tried to stiff homeowners on the Gulf Coast by under paying them for their losses.

[55] As of Jan. 4, U.S. Senator Wayne Allard and Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave have requested federal disaster assistance (i.e. money) to help counties in eastern Colorado clear roads and pastures and make aerial hay drops for stranded cattle. There’s nothing wrong with spending tax dollars on disaster aid. That’s how the system is supposed to work.

 

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