Little to no help from the govt. for those Americans in the plain states

[cynatnite]

My sister lives in Nebraska and as some of you know she's an avid animal lover. She cares for a variety of horses and adopts them out. Her and her husband also raise dogs, cats, chickens, cattle and many others. They've been at this many years.

The winter storm has devestated them and their animals. So far they've been lucky and lost only a few head of cattle. They have enough feed stocked away to last another week or so. They can feed the other animals as well. Water is a major problem.

They've been without electricity for some time. Everything in the frigerator and the deep freezer is gone. She managed to save some food by sticking it into the snow. For the last few days they've gotten by on MRE's donated to them. It's been really hard on them with two little girls to keep fed. With the severe damage from the storm they don't expect any electricity for another few weeks at the least. She expects to go without longer than that since they are in an isolated area.

Yesterday and today my mom and I were on the phone trying to find out what was going on. She found a reporter who gave her the number of another. A few phone calls later we arranged for my sister to get a generator and some fuel. We bought two oil lamps at a thrift shop and got them overnighted to my sister.

What stuns us most about this is that considering how devestating this storm has been for so many out there no declaring this portion of Nebraska a national disaster area. My sister and her family got lucky, but how many families aren't that fortunate? I don't get this.

I know the more important news is congress, but I have heard so little about how badly this storm has devestated Colorado, Kansas and Nebraska. I haven't heard a thing about declaring these states national disaster areas. I read that Bill Richardson did in his state when the storm came through there.

Where is the government? Nowhere as usual. People can only rely on each other. Otherwise, they'd starve and freeze to death.

[sandnsea]

1. Saw one clip on CNN today

It showed the great big metal electric towers had collapsed. That's the first I knew there was even a problem in Nebraska. Having lived in Montana, I'm familiar with blizzards that snap the wood poles, but have never seen the metal towers go down. This looks pretty serious and certainly does deserve more attention. How many days has it been since the storm hit Nebraska?

[cynatnite]

5. I think it's been about a week...

Just around their home they estimate there are over 150 miles of downed poles. They snapped from the 3-5 inches of ice.

That's just around where they live and this storm went over a huge portion of the state. I'm shocked they haven't declared any place in that state a national declaration emergency.

[annabanana]

2. It's very disheartening to discover (as we all did after Katrina)

That we are all on our own now. This disaster in the midwest doesn't even have the attention of the media, so charitable donations and assistance isn't getting in there either.

edit:nominated

[Robbien]

3. I did read that the reserve was called out to drop hay on some cattle

who where stranded in the storm. But after reading through the lines in the article, one finds that only big factory farms where being helped out with this hay drop. Family farms were on their own.

It is a scary world we are living in.

[TheCentepedeShoes]

4. Someone I used to work with

and her husband run cattle in Baca Co, Colorado (southeast corner). They took over the ranch when her father-in-law became ill and had to move to a nursing home. I don't have her phone number, but I'm going to try to get it this weekend and give her a call. I just hope they are ok.