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Friday, June 18, 2010
025.5 - Biggest disaster response in Wyoming history
If this wasn’t Fremont County’s finest hour, it certainly ranked as one of the most impressive responses to impending doom in our history.
Thursday morning, the massive war known as the Fremont County Flood of 2010 (Lander version) ended, not with a torrent, but with sort of a trickle.
“DE-MO will be the word of the day,” Incident Commander Craig Haslam told representatives of 52 local, county, state and national entities who fought against record high floodwaters for almost two weeks. DE-MO stands for “demobilization,” which meant breaking down camps, packing up trailers, turning in radios, checking in before checking out and heading home.
With high waters still rising in the Big and Little Wind Rivers, many members of the crew moved over to Riverton to protect folks there.
In Lander Thursday morning, Meteorologist Chuck Baker calmly explained that predicted rains were not as bad as they could have been. Temperatures were not as high, and not as much snow melted. We caught a huge break when the forks of the Popo Agie Rivers stayed below flood stage.
But even with high water in the two Wind Rivers, most folks felt that there may be a few more battles, the war was essentially over.
And what a war it was.
Officials said it was the biggest disaster effort of its type in Wyoming’s history. Right at 400 National Guard personnel participated bringing two helicopters and 100 vehicles.
More than 500,000 sand bags were filled and 35,000 volunteer hours were totaled for the event, including yeoman work by a great many groups including even nine Wyoming Catholic College students and their supervisor Steve Sawtell.
There were 32 square miles affected and 2,100 homes and structures threatened or damaged in the two-week event, which started June 4 in this writer’s back yard.
Millions of dollars were spent with the two most conspicuous artifacts left over being the Great Walls on Fremont Street and at City Park. These were huge Army Corps of Engineers sand walls that can withstand anything Mother Nature can throw at them.
Best of all, the vast emergency mobilization system worked.
Joe Moore, Cheyenne, head of Wyoming’s Office of Homeland Security: “This is a model for such an event. It will be the standard on how to deal with disasters.” Former Rivertonite Kim Lee, accompanied Moore.
Special thanks to Gov. Dave Freudenthal: “I can’t give you everything you want, but we’ll get you everything you need.”
The event had so many heroes. On my list are Sheriff Skip Hornecker, Lander Mayor Mick Wolfe and city staff folks Mickey Simmons, Dan Shatto, Don Reynolds and Nick Hudson. The Fire Department under Chief Bob Perkins was terrific along with local police. Not sure how many hours those guys logged, but they had our town covered.
Tribal Business Council Chairmen Ivan Posey (Shoshone) and Harvey Spoonhunter (Arapaho) worked hard as did their fellow council members plus Bureau of Indian Affairs staff Bob Jones, Eric Rhodenbaugh and Ray Nation. The rez got hit hard but people were in the right place at the right time.
“We are all brothers in the face of this enemy,” one of those leaders said, which was certainly true.
County Commissioners Pat Hickerson, Dennis Heckart, Keija Whiteman, Dennis Christensen and Doug Thompson worked as did their county crews.
Forester Paul Morency, a veteran incident command guy nicknamed Hoss (Mike Hosteller) and public information officer Chris Venhuizen played key roles.
Logistics were handled by Mike Bournazian with Dave Geible as chief safety officer while Lauri Wempen was head of the medical unit.
Filling in at the end of the incident as head of the National Guard was former Landerite Martin Kidner of Cheyenne. He corrected a few maps and people asked, “How do you know that?” Kidner was once WYDOT’s chief engineer in Lander. “I just know,” he would tell them, with a laugh. Delbert McOmie from WYDOT was on the job, too.
Kathi Metzler headed up Fremont County Emergency Management while NOLS’ John Gookin headed up the swift water rescue team. There are hundreds more people to mention, but in the end it was a terrific team effort.
But we also can’t end this without suggesting people give a hand to those folks who lost their homes in the flooding or suffered damage. The vast majority of the 2,100 buildings affected suffered little or no damage but in some cases, people lost almost everything. Folks in Hudson, Riverton and on the reservation suffered the most serious losses.
No one was killed. Nobody was even seriously injured.
On behalf of 35,000 County residents, thanks so much to folks from around Wyoming for coming to our rescue.
Yes, that fact that a major tragedy was averted could make this go down in history as Fremont County’s finest hour.
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