Western South Dakota is recovering from one of the worst blizzards ever recorded in the area. Thousands are still without power, broken trees lie everywhere, and reports of dead cattle are still being assessed by area ranchers.
Crises have a tendency to teach lessons. And on today's Dakota Digest we're continuing our series called The State of Our State with a look at disaster infrastructure in South Dakota.
The blizzard that just hit the Black Hills is posing huge challenges, and one by one they are being overcome. Officials say the response and recovery effort is going well overall. As the storm hit, snowcats and snowmobiles were deployed to rescue those stranded and escort first responders to 911 calls. Emergency managers quickly set up operations centers. Shelters are open, and utility crews are in overdrive with assistance from several states to restore electricity as soon as possible.
But the way officials respond to disasters didn’t evolve overnight; it came about from the lessons learned in past emergencies. In fact there is a connection to the response this Blizzard and a fire that hit the Black Hills more than 13 years ago. The Jasper Fire in 2000 remains the largest wildfire in Black Hills history.
“The Jasper Fire was a turning event when it comes to Wildland Fire management in South Dakota,” says Jim Strain, Assistant Chief of Operations with South Dakota Wildland Fire.
Back in 2000, he was among those battling Jasper. One of the biggest challenges in the Jasper fire was a lack of resources. The ignition came on a hot August day when multiple other fires were already burning around the country, so, Strain says, when local firefighters called for help and national resources, few were available.
“We couldn’t get type one helicopters in, we could get type one hot hot crews in, and we just held on,” says Strain.
Local crews fought to keep the fire below 20,000 acres in the first four days. But on day five, the fire blew up. It jumped lines and consumed 50,000 acres in less than 12 hours. The smoke plume rose to 30,000 feet and, 50 miles away, ashes from the fire rained down on Rapid City.
“We had never seen a wildland fire in the Black Hills ever exhibit that excessive growth or fire behavior,” says Strain.
A few months later, then Governor Bill Janklow gathered together Local State and Federal partners, he spurred the creation of the South Dakota Division of Wildland Fire with the goal of insuring that resources would always be on hand to fight major fires. Over 13 years later, the state agency has been on hand at just about every major incident and not just fires. The division led the battle against the 2011 Missouri River Flood at Dakota Dunes. Strain is out in the field, his crews are using chainsaws to cut up trees downed in the most recent blizzard.
“You could say not only Jasper made a big difference for not only Wildland fire, but it helped South Dakotan’s to look at some big pictures with all risk management, “ says Strain.
Wildland fire crews traveled to the southeastern part of the state earlier this year to help chunk up downed trees, after a massive ice storm crippled South Dakota’s largest city. Sioux Falls is often immune to the worst winter storms, but April’s freeze and thaw brought vicious weather to town. Jeff Helm is a division chief with Sioux Falls Fire Rescue.
"As first responders, when those calls come in, especially in an event like that with heavy rains and then the ice and the things that were breaking, it was causing power lines to go down, which are obviously dangerous when they’re electrified," Helm says.
Not to mention structure fires, small car crashes and typical medical emergencies. All while a thick coating of ice plastered streets and smothered trees. Then snow fell, and thousands of huge branches and whole trees surrendered to the weight of the winter precipitation. More power lines snapped. Division Chief Jeff Helm says serving all of those people at the same time is a tall order.
"It can overwhelm an agency. Luckily we handled it, but we had to call in extra crews and have triage type things for these events, for these calls that were coming in, to make sure we were handling the emergency ones as quickly as we could and, some of those that could wait a little bit longer, we let those sit until we could get to them," Helm says.
Helm says all city departments found small changes to make to existing plans inserting elements that worked and eliminating steps that weren’t effective or impeded recovery. Helm says crews operated on their typical 24-hour rotation, but leaders called in dozens of extra first responders to help, and they pared down the number of rescue workers who attended to smaller problems to distribute resources.
The spring ice storm demanded all of the city’s emergency crews, and Sioux Falls opened a local emergency operations center for 21 days. The city used a plan that pulls responding departments together on an incident management team. Leaders say that collaboration worked well, but they learned they needed more staff at the center. Now emergency management is incorporating other city workers who have complementary skills and training.
While 2013’s ice storm is inarguably one of the worst natural disasters in Sioux Falls’ history, the entire state endured its own weather catastrophe less than two years before.
The 2011 Missouri River flood was an event officials repeatedly label “unprecedented.” At one point, 165-thousand cubic feet of water rushed through the Oahe dam near Pierre every second. State Emergency Management director Kristi Turman says she didn’t have a precedent for the onslaught of water pouring down the Mighty Mo.
"You can use history, and, in a lot of cases, that’s very helpful. But there was no history on something like this," Turman says.
Turman says officials piped information from the U-S Army Corps of Engineers to South Dakotans who worked desperately to try and barricade their homes from the imminent flooding, but that wasn’t always effective.
"These folks were not sitting on their homes looking at news internet sites. They probably didn’t even have a radio playing," Turman. "They were scrambling to get their furniture and all of their possessions out of their home. They were stripping their homes of cabinets. They were building berms, and that information wasn’t getting to them right away, because they were busy."
Turman says, in the aftermath, emergency management leaders realize they need to go back to the basics in a crisis like the 2011 flooding. The plan includes hanging information sheets in local gas stations and grocery stores, and physically getting officials into the area to update people face-to-face.
The emergency management director says state officials created some plans on the fly that summer, and they’ve now solidified those strategies. Turman says communication is always a big challenge when disasters strike, and other officials agree with her that keeping everyone in the loop is no simple task, no matter what the crisis.
Back in Rapid City, the recovery effort continues after last week’s blizzard. South Dakotans often come together to help each other toward recovery. At the same time, the devastation can bring reflection, and those lessons lead to better preparation for the next inevitable blizzard, flood or fire.
