[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 6 (Thursday, January 23, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S688-S689]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      WINTER STORMS IN THE DAKOTAS

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, today the agricultural statistical folks 
who have been doing surveys in the Dakotas have told us that the winter 
storms--successive, bitter, awful winter storms that have hit one after 
another--in our State have killed somewhere around 13,000 cattle in 
North Dakota. It has been a rugged difficult time for North Dakotans 
and for livestock producers in our State.
  I spoke the other day about the kind of bitter storms that we face, 
almost unlike any that most of us in North Dakota can remember. And 
again, within the last 24 hours, another storm has hit. Both interstate 
highways, the east-west highway in North Dakota and the north-south 
highway, were closed down completely. Snow, 50-mile-an-hour winds, and 
bitterly cold temperatures make this an awfully difficult time for 
North Dakotans.
  Thousands and thousands of volunteers in North Dakota have responded 
to the crisis. And the Federal Government has too. President Clinton 
has declared that our entire State is suffering from a major disaster. 
The Federal Emergency Management Agency is in North Dakota. They are 
rounding up heavy equipment from around the country to come and help us 
open roads to help protect the lives of people and the livestock herds.
  The Department of Agriculture has provided some feed assistance and 
some other aid to try to help producers get to their cattle and feed 
them. So we have had some help. But we need more. And today we are 
going to be visiting with the Department of Agriculture once again 
because the assistance they have offered so far--feed assistance for 
livestock--is simply too narrowly drawn to be of very much help to 
anybody. It is of help to some but it is just too narrow.
  It is interesting. In the last Congress when the freedom to farm bill 
was passed these emergency feed programs were abolished. I thought it 
was the wrong thing to do. And it was. But they were abolished. Now we 
have gotten the Department of Agriculture to try to jury-rig an 
emergency approach to try to give us some help. But they need to 
broaden that substantially so the livestock producers--farmers and 
ranchers out there, many of whom have been operating on very thin 
margins anyway--have the capability of getting their roads open, 
getting the feed in, and feeding their herds.
  We really do need some help not just in North Dakota but in our whole 
region of the country.
  So we are going to be visiting with the Department of Agriculture 
again this afternoon to try to broaden this approach to see if we can't 
get some help in there. Mr. President, 13,000 cattle have died in North 
Dakota. Many more are at great risk because they have survived five or 
six blizzards now and are hit with another at the moment. We expect 
other storms. So this is a very difficult problem.
  I spoke the other day about the heroes in our part of the country 
during this difficult winter, and talked about going out on a snowplow 
with a crew in conditions in which you couldn't see 2 feet in front of 
you; nearly whiteout conditions with 50-mile-an-hour winds, bitterly 
cold; going up by a trailer court where you could not see any trailer 
houses because even their roofs were not to be seen; snow was over the 
roof line. Conditions were about as difficult as they could get, and 
yet people made an emergency run to help get a 2-year-old boy, about 
whom I talked the other day, to a hospital who would have died had he 
not gotten there, a 20-mile trip that took 6 hours with four people 
driving two ambulances, two snowplows and two trucks plowing through 
roads that were impassable, in zero visibility conditions, with 40- and 
50-mile-an-hour winds. The people who do that are public servants out 
there to whom we owe a great debt of gratitude and who are really truly 
heroes.

  I also wanted to mention another fellow in North Dakota who I think 
deserves mention because when we have these tough times it is not just 
the program that is put in place to help people; it is the people who 
help people, neighbors coming together and doing things to help each 
other.
  On Tuesday night this week, at 10 o'clock in the evening, Jan Novak 
was driving home, having just finished her work, in Grafton, ND. As Jan 
Novak was driving home--and that was a point when the blizzard was 
hitting and the interstates were being closed and giant winds were 
coming up--she lost her way and could not see much in front of her. She 
had to pull off the road and became stuck in a snowbank.
  And there she was in the middle of this raging blizzard. This was 
just Tuesday evening of this week.
  She did say she had blankets and she had some gas. She was not 
feeling that she maybe would not be found. She felt that she would be 
able to hold out, and she started her car intermittently in the 
terribly cold weather, but then she worried about whether her car was 
going to start just based on the sounds from her engine.
  Her husband called the Walsh County Sheriff, Lauren Wild, about 1 
o'clock in the morning, and the sheriff tried to get some people out to 
take a look to see where she was. They tried to search the road she 
might have taken to go home out in the country from Grafton, ND, and 
they searched for several hours, and in conditions of almost no 
visibility and could not find Jan Novak, who was then out there stuck 
in the car.
  And they also called people along the route. They called a fellow 
named Halvorson, Don Halvorson, at 3:30 in the morning--he is a 
farmer--got him out of bed, woke him up and told him that there was a 
woman lost along this route and they could not seem to find her. Of 
course, Don Halvorson had not seen her, nor had anyone else passing 
along the way, and because nobody could see the roads they eventually 
had to call off the search.
  Don Halvorson could not sleep, he said. So at 3:30 in the morning, 
after having gone back to bed and not being able sleep, he got up, put 
his clothes on and went out in the yard and started his tractor, which 
had a cab on it, and went out to look. And with the tractor, in 
conditions of almost zero visibility, for 3 hours he searched up and 
down his road and up and down his area of the country, and somewhere 
around 6:30 in the morning this fellow named Don Halvorson, in his 
tractor, pulled up to

[[Page S689]]

Jan Novak's car. And he got out of the tractor and rescued her, took 
her back to his home. She says that he is a true hero, and he said he 
just could not sleep knowing there was somebody out in that storm.
  It is interesting to me that these stories of people helping each 
other seem to get so little attention. This one did get a little 
attention. But bad news travels halfway around the world before good 
news gets its shoes on, they say, and I understand that. But there are 
wonderful stories of people who cannot sleep when something is wrong 
and who want to go out and help other people.
  In our part of the country, and I expect in the part of the country 
that is represented by the Presiding Officer, we face some pretty 
difficult times. And the only way you get along is to work with each 
other, neighbors helping neighbors, folks helping folks. Don Halvorson 
could have gone back to sleep, I suppose. He did not know where Jan 
Novak was. He did not know Jan Novak. Instead, he got up, put on his 
clothes, got in his tractor in bitterly cold weather, with raging wind 
and zero visibility, and risked his life to go search for a woman 
stranded in the blizzard whose life was also at risk.
  Even as I talked today about the need for some help from the 
Department of Agriculture for livestock feed and for ranchers and 
farmers out there who are struggling, I also wanted to pay homage to 
some heroes who are out there. Some are on road crews today working 
shift after shift. Some are also in farmhouses helping neighbors get 
along in about as difficult a winter as I can remember in the history 
of North Dakota.
  Mr. President, with that, I yield the floor and make a point of order 
that a quorum is not present.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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