Book review

Rob Hanson

Review of “Blizzard 1949” by Roy V. Allmen (1991)

Even in places accustomed to heavy snowfall and what that means for the lifestyles of their inhabitants, no one could have prepared for the Blizzard of 1949, which hit the states of Kansas and Nebraska particularly hard. And for anyone who knows about the hazards of living in such a flat state, it’s not just a lot of snow that kills. It’s the impassible drifts that cut off travel routes and leaving both humans and cattle for dead, out of the reach of assistance.

Roy V. Allmen’s book “Blizzard 1949” is a collection of stories from one of the biggest blizzards of all time. Throughout its 189 pages, Allmen approaches the disaster from the people’s point of view rather than a straight-scientific look at the storms causes and data.

The book begins with story of D.O. Durr, a woman who lived along a major highway in west-central Kansas. While awaiting guests for the Thanksgiving holiday, the blizzard begins to change the lives of Durr and many others. As the snow starts to drift across the road in front of her home, she watches as vehicle after vehicle struggles to make it through, all of which eventually fail, sending its passengers to her front door in search of shelter. Before she knows it, her entire home is filled with holiday travelers for which she tries to provide enough food and a place to rest.

Since the story is mostly a compilation of stories, they go on and on. A wedding is delayed after the groom has to basically shovel his way across miles of highway to reach his bride. Two men suffer severe frost bite and nearly lose their lives trying to bring their cattle to shelter.

One of the major – and possibly unintended – themes of the book is the lack of preparation on the part of many people stranded in the blizzard. While it would have been impossible at the time without technology to know that a blizzard of such magnitude was on its way, it seems as if people would have been more aware of what could happen while travelling through these states in the winter. One of Durr’s first observations of the people that stop at her home is that few of them are truly prepared for the weather. Many with small children had little more than a winter coat and a light blanket in their vehicles. As Durr notes, its easy to forget about such things when you’re travelling a warm vehicle for hours on end. Awareness and preparation are things that we have talked about all semester long in Environmental hazards, and it would have been interesting to get a better look at what the towns and cities did in those days to ensure the safety of their residents. Although, from what the book made it sound like there might have been little people could have done. Without Doppler they wouldn’t have been able to predict the storm and say, bring their cattle in from pasture early. And in many cases plowing just wasn’t an option because of the size of the drifts. Some plow drivers were injured after smashing into the immovable walls of snow and ice.

I did like the way the book really painted a picture of what life was like for the people who survived – and didn’t survive – this blizzard. And although it was relatively slim, a few scientific looks at the blizzard, such as measurements and mitigation efforts, gave decent insight into the magnitude of the storm.

The first numbers that stuck out to me where that of Chadron, Neb. The town saw drifts piled up from 500 to 1,000 feet long, and saw as much as 40 inches of snow in that one storm.

The book later mentions that the President announced a state of emergency for the region, ensuring those valuable funds, as we discussed in class. According to the book, the original amount of money to be dispersed was $200,000, although $500,000 was available if needed. The Army Corps of Engineers also were sent  on "Operation Snow Bound" to the area to rescue cattle, bring food to stranded people and start digging out.

$500,000 doesn’t seem like a lot of money, especially in this day and age, but it was 1949 and it also was a snowstorm, not something people view as terribly destructive like a tsunami or volcanic eruption.

But the figures reported at the end of the book reveal the true destruction of the beastly storm.

Overall estimated losses reached $190 million. Seventy-six people were killed while roughly 250,00 cattle and sheep were lost. Another 100,000 cattle would be found dead in Wyoming, Colorado and the Dakotas. Crop losses reached $108 million, while property damage topped out at around $10.7 million.

Alleman’s representation of the blizzard was not directly related to the course, in that I think it could have benefited from more detail in terms of data and more analysis on how it fit into the hazard paradigms – other than mitigation. It also would have been beneficial to create a broader understanding of how this storm system fit into the overall picture of weather in the country and world around that time. But all in all, “Blizzard 1949” was an interesting take on humanity and the coming together of people trying to survive and maintain their livlihoods.