Blizzard keeps emergency manager busy
By PHYLLIS ZORN
Staff writer
Emergency manager Marcy Hostetler likely needs a long sleep.
Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, while ice and snow fell on the county, motorists slid off roads and ambulances had to be towed out of ditches, Hostetler got a 30-minute nap here and there.
Days like that are part of her job, she said.
Hostetler lost count of stranded cars at 14, but there were more.
“The reason it was so bad is there was a thick layer of ice underneath that snow,” she said.
She had Kansas Department of Transportation do a flyover of K-15 north of US-56 Monday to make sure no additional stranded vehicles were stranded there.
KDOT puts less emphasis on K-15 during storm events, and that stretch of highway got so bad during the storm that even ambulance drivers didn’t want to risk it.
At 6:15 p.m. Monday, KDOT reported there were no stranded vehicles on the highway.
County road crews clear county roads. KDOT is tasked with highways.
Tow trucks, fire engines, state troopers, and deputies all were sliding off roads, but they helped each other out, and tow trucks didn’t have to be called for them.
One Auto House Towing truck got stranded on ice. Auto House Towing sent a second truck to help their driver.
One ambulance slid off the road. The crew was waiting for a wrecker when the road and bridge department sent a grader and sand truck to get the ambulance unstuck.
“We had travelers who were stranded because they didn’t want to leave their vehicles,” Hostetler said. “We will never force somebody out of their vehicles. If they don’t want to leave their cars, we can’t make them.”
She said one semi driver told her he was forbidden to leave his truck if it was stranded, so he stayed at the scene.
One woman who slid off near Lincolnville had nowhere safe to go, so Lincolnville Fire Chief Les Kaiser, who was patrolling US-56/77, opened an emergency shelter at the town’s community center for her.
It was the only warming shelter that had to be opened, though other cities had plans if other shelters needed to be opened, Hostetler said.
“We had no other requests for shelters,” she said. “Warming shelters are based on if there is a request.”
Hostetler said she expected abandoned cars to be found through Friday.
staff photo by nicholas kimball
A girl takes advantage of a snowday Monday to make snow angels in front of her house.
STAFF PHOTO BY CHERI BENTZ
Even birds were shivering in the cold Monday as this blue jay found shelter at a feeder.
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cold after feeding horses at 4 p.m.
Roger said he was thankful for the professionalism emergency responders showed that night.
“I was so impressed with the two deputies that were out there and EMS in general,” he said.
He noted the hospital had all the equipment needed to take care of getting his father’s body temperature back up to normal.
Physicians at St. Luke attempted to get him transferred to a larger hospital but could not find one because of staff shortages.
He was dismissed Tuesday into Pam and Roger’s care and is back home.
An appointment was set up with a cardiologist, but since that appointment is several weeks away, Pam said the family would try to get him seen sooner by a different cardiologist.
Meanwhile, he already has an appointment next week with his primary care physician in Newton.
Before Sunday’s incident, Curtis staunchly refused to move off the farm, where he kept his horses, Pam said. Now he’s changed his mind.
“He’s ready for assisted living now,” Pam said.
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as businesses he had received calls to shovel.
“I got at least eight more,” Jirak said on Monday. “And I get calls while I’m working.”
While he said he was getting paid for the work, it was impressive how many places he had agreed to shovel in such brutal weather.
“I just love helping my community out,” he said.
Asked whether he was a fan of snow, Jirak remained stoic.
“Not really,” he said. “But it has to come down at some point.”
Was he not cold in the freezing conditions?
“I get pretty warm moving around,” he said with a smile.
Weekend blizzard almost shuts town down
By FINN HARTNETT
Staff writer
It was Sunday, the biblical day of rest.
Add to that unshoveled sidewalks, dangerously icy roads, and snow pouring down, and it was no wonder Marion streets were empty, with businesses closed.
Plus, there was football on. Even if the Chiefs were resting all their best players, it was a perfect day to hole up inside.
But as with all things in life, there were exceptions to the rule.
Mark Putter was out Sunday. In fact, he’d been out since 6 a.m., shoveling snow around Casey’s General Store.
Putter didn’t sleep at all Saturday night, he said, and would likely be out shoveling until evening.
He and his team — two other grizzled-looking men — were part of a personal contracting company and wanted to make a good impression in their first job for the nationwide chain.
Despite the tough work, Putter said he liked being out in the snow.
“I just wish it was 80 degrees with snow,” he said.
The three men had plans to shovel the Hillsboro and Herington Casey’s stores as well but couldn’t get there because of the roads.
For most of Sunday, they toiled away around Marion’s store, keeping the area around impressively tidy.
Casey’s was a rare store open for business. The few employees who’d managed to make it in declined to comment on how the snow had affected their day, citing store policy prohibiting them speaking to the media.
The only other business open was right across the street.
With no one else able or willing to come in Sunday, Subway employee Kara Druse had been by herself all day in the store.
While Subway does not require stores to open in such conditions, the owner likes them to be, “just in case.”
By 1:30 p.m., Druse had served one customer, a man who’d come in for a soda before getting his car stuck in the parking lot on his way out.
“He had to borrow our shovel,” Druse said.
Dozens of loaves of fresh bread would have to be thrown out at the end of the day. The store was not able to donate the loaves without filing some paperwork, she said
She personally is not a fan of snow.
“It’s like the biggest deceiver of all,” she said of the weather. “It looks all nice and pretty, but then you can’t do anything!”
She was excited to be off Monday to spend some time with her pets.
STAFF PHOTO BY FINN HARTNETT
Cooper Jirak mans his snowblower Monday.
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Armstrong said Auto House used to have access to police scanners until scanners were encrypted. Having access helped so operators could plan better.
“Our biggest challenge is, we can only travel about as well as other vehicles,” Armstrong said.
Ice is a big struggle for tow drivers, just as it is for motorists.
“A little patience goes a long way,” Armstrong said. “We’re always all hands on deck, but it takes about a week to recover.”
KDOT public information officer Ashley Perez said no KDOT employee remembered closing all roads in the past.
Although KDOT announced roads were closed, no barricades were placed.
“Barricades were not used by KDOT as we do not have the manpower to set up barricades during the storm,” Perez said. “They get in the way of KDOT operations and emergency responders, and they can blow over, causing safety concerns.”
Perez said she thought closing roads made it better for both motorists and first responders.
“The closure helps keep motorists off the road and helps increase safety for first responders and emergency vehicles, so they have space to get where they are going,” Perez said.
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colnville called her boyfriend, who drove from El Dorado to pick her up.
As of Tuesday, her car remained in Lincolnville, though she was expected to come get it soon.
The other car taken to Lincolnville contained a woman and her nephew who had been driving to Chicago before getting stuck in the snowstorm.
They were taken to the Lincolnville Community Center, which was outfitted as a warming shelter for the occasion.
“We could have put more in there if we needed to,” Kaiser said.
They stayed in the shelter for two hours before deciding to drive to Herington and stay in a hotel for the night.
“Most everybody that we dealt with yesterday was from out of the area,” Kaiser said.
KDOT officially closed the state’s highways around 3 p.m. Sunday. Kaiser’s team began responding to calls just before noon.
“When they closed the highway down, that finally helped stem the flow of traffic,” he said. “We had everything cleared, people off the road, everything back in the station by 5 p.m.”
Kaiser noted just how bad the conditions were on the road and the danger it posed for drivers.
“At one point, it was snowing, and we had zero visibility,” he said. “We’re working on a vehicle, and we had a semi and five cars blow by us.”
Kaiser said his crew was unfazed by the risk.
“To our guys, it’s just another day,” he said. “We do this so we can help people.”
Some busier than others
By FINN HARTNETT
Staff writer
Public workers, from ambulance crews to firefighters to local police, had their usual responsibilities thrown out the window this weekend as a huge snowstorm struck the county.
But the amount of work the snowstorm caused varied dramatically between departments.
Hillsboro’s fire department, for example, had a relatively quiet weekend.
“It went just fine for us,” fire chief Ben Steketee said. “We didn’t get called out.”
While Hillsboro police aided a few motorists stuck in the snow in and outside town Sunday, police chief Jessey Hiebert also reported a quiet weekend.
“Our town was just a ghost town,” he said. “We didn’t have but one traffic accident, which was nothing more than a vehicle sliding into a stop sign.”
Hiebert described a patrol officer getting stuck in the snow while on duty and another who was unable to get his car out of his driveway, as some of the more interesting things that occurred.
Meanwhile, Lincolnville fire chief Les Kaiser reported a dramatic Sunday as his team of volunteers from Lincolnville and Lost Springs rescued five vehicles stranded on the snow-clogged interstate.
County ambulance director Chuck Kenney was similarly put into difficult situations after weather dramatically restricted the movement of his fleet.
After Hillsboro ambulance was dispatched to take a 75-year-old woman to St. Luke Hospital Saturday evening, the vehicle slid off an icy Upland Rd.
Marion ambulance had to be activated to help the woman, while Marion’s fire crew attempted to get Hillsboro ambulance back on the road.
After firefighters failed to extricate the ambulance and dispatchers informed medics no county personnel were available, Kenney personally called the road and bridge department.
“EMS and the road and bridge department usually have a pretty good relationship with trying to get things handled,” Kenney said. “I called Tom Hall, and he was able to bring a grader out and a sand truck out and laid some sand down, and we were able to get everything unstuck.”
Three more ambulance calls were made over the weekend. Hillsboro ambulance was not dispatched to any of them.
Kenney said this was because Marion’s ambulance was closer to the incident each time.
Marion ambulance became stuck in snow Sunday afternoon while driving to a 83-year-old Peabody woman who fell and hurt her back.
Medics eventually completed the call on foot.
Asked why Hillsboro medics didn’t complete Saturday’s call on foot, Kenney said: “I don’t have an answer for that one. I’m going to talk to the crews about that.”
Another serious incident occurred Sunday evening when Marion ambulance and a Hillsboro ambulance supervisor were directed to a farmhouse on US-56/77 near 210th Rd.
An 89-year-old man had fallen and lay outside for two hours before sheriff’s deputies found him.
Marion ambulance took 40 minutes to arrive because of the weather. The man was then transported to St. Luke in serious condition.
Last modified Jan. 9, 2025
