Storm rescue plagued by glitches, Kirkpatrick told

"I was so scared," said Lavonia Whiterock Begay, of Tonalea, Ariz. "The commodity cell phone doesn't work up there, we don't get a connection. It was so bad, we couldn't even see the doghouse."

The Begay family was one of several to share stressful tales of surviving the recent winter storms in a recent visit with U.S. Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, D-Ariz.

The meeting was set up by Coconino County Supervisor Lena Fowler.

"Ann asked me to set something up so she could talk with people, so I organized this. It's an opportunity for Ann to meet with people impacted by the storm," Fowler said.

The informal meeting took place Tuesday at the tribe's storm response command center next to the Tuba City Hospital's Behavioral Health Center. The small trailer is usually used for meetings of the hospital's board of directors.

"I'm always concerned that decisions they make in Washington don't always connect with the communities impacted," Kirkpatrick said.

The Begay family lives in a remote part of Western Navajo and was effectively imprisoned by the snow for several long days.

"When the first storm came, we weren't prepared," Begay admitted. "And then the second one came and I thought 'How are we going to get through the winter'?"

She was worried about her husband, Dale, who has medical problems, and her children who were unable to reach the school bus stop. Even without deep snow, getting the kids to school poses difficulties, Begay explained.

"We have to take the kids seven miles, to the willow trees, to meet the bus," she said. "We don't always have money to put gas in the car."

The family's car couldn't traverse the deep snow, and their truck is sitting in the yard with a busted transmission, Begay said.

Not only were the Begays snowbound, when chapter officials tried to send workers out to check on them, their vehicles got stuck twice.

After six days, when an orange-clad rescue worker was spotted approaching their house, Begay said she had trouble believing it.

"I thought I was hallucinating," she said. "I was so relieved, I cried."

Kirkpatrick said she wanted to hear not only what went well, but also where the problems were and what needed improvement. She got an earful.

There were problems with communication and jurisdiction between different agencies, said Tuba City Incident Commander Ron Brown.

"We had trouble coordinating between FEMA and the National Guard," said Brown, who is also the police department's community outreach officer. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is the lead agency in providing relief during major disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina.

"We were told on the second day that two Black Hawk helicopters would be coming with supplies, but we never saw them," Brown said.

"They didn't come?" Kirkpatrick asked.

"Oh, they came, but we didn't see them," Brown replied.

The pilots apparently had bad directions and couldn't find the local responders and had to land alongside U.S. 89 when they ran out of gas, he explained.

"I guess we had a 'Black Hawk down' situation right here," Brown added, alluding to the 2001 movie of that name.

'A Navajo area'

Though the situation caused by the storms was dire, police and emergency medical personnel undoubtedly saved many lives, Brown said.

Some people had medical conditions and ran low on medicine, but it was difficult to arrange delivery, said Tuba City Public Nurse Director Ann Garro.

"I called Chinle for help and they said they couldn't get there. I called Hopi and they said it was a Navajo area," she said.

Often jurisdictional wrangling seemed to outmuscle common sense when it came to providing assistance, Tuba City Chapter President Max Goldtooth said.

"My nurses worked 10 straight days," Garro said. "I tried to give them a day off, but they said the people needed them out there."

Kirkpatrick was impressed by the guts and grit displayed by many of the emergency workers, chapter and county officials and the residents as they battled to survive what could have been a disaster.

People improvised as best they could.

The Begays have sheep, but their nearest corral is a quarter-mile from the house, so husband Dale built a wooden sled and the family - with kids pitching in - loaded it with hay and dragged it to the corral.

Many of the stranded families asked for dog food, but it was not considered an "essential supply" by officialdom, Garro said. But common sense-wise, sheep are the lifeblood of the community and they need the dogs to guard the sheep so, by extension, dog food is important, she explained.

Although families asking for dog food found they were barking up the wrong tree, government officials did deliver much-needed hay for the livestock.

The help was uneven, however.

The first National Guard unit to arrive jumped right in to help, Goldtooth said.

"They were unloading hay, crawling on the ground and getting dirty to get the hay to the livestock," he said.

But when that unit was replaced, the second group of guardsmen offered little help. They stood around "with their hats, coats and gloves" on, and watched ill-clad Navajos load the hay, he said.

"Then they wanted us to ride in the back of the trucks with the hay so we could unload it," Goldtooth said. "The commander said it was regulations. They weren't authorized to touch the hay!"

How can one National Guard unit pitch in wholeheartedly and another spend most of its time idling around, he wondered?

"You need to use common sense when it's life or death," Garro agreed.

Manners needed

Some of the emergency workers could use some cultural sensitivity training, Brown added.

The Navajos are poor, but proud people, Goldtooth said. Though the second Guard unit didn't fully exert itself, community members still wanted to show their appreciation and they spent the day preparing meals for the guardsmen.

The response was mincing, at best.

"The commander said he didn't know if they could eat the food," Goldtooth said.

There were communication problems at all levels, said Regina Ellison, senior project specialist for the Western Navajo Agency Local Government Support Center.

While people were desperate for food, the tribe's Tuba City warehouse was full of USDA commodity foodstuffs but it remained closed while officials tried to determine if it could be used in the emergency response effort, Ellison said.

There needs to be a better way to streamline the process, Kirkpatrick said.

"We know this situation will happen again," she added.

"If people used common sense, 50 percent of these problems would go away," said Summit Fire Chief Don Howard said.

A county snowplow would clear a road, but not the offshoots leading to people's homes because the private access roads are not BIA roads, he explained.

Often heavy equipment would sit unmoving as people struggled to reach distribution centers to receive food and supplies, Goldtooth said.

Also, people from remote areas might have to walk or ride horses many miles to reach the distribution point - and then be forced to make hard decisions because they could not carry 20-pound bags of potatoes, five-gallon bottles of water and firewood.

"People would have to decide if they needed the water more, or the firewood, or the hay," he added.

Kirkpatrick promised to take the communities' concerns seriously and have her staff look into ways of improving or streamlining the response to an emergency.

"I sit on the Homeland Security Committee, and it oversees FEMA," Kirkpatrick said.

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