LIMON, Colo. — The town of Limon on the Eastern Plains is no stranger to storms, but four solid days of snow was certainly a challenge for first responders in the area.
Limon Area Fire Protection District Chief Corinn Perry and Limon Police Chief Lynn Yowell sat down with Denver7 to share how the departments handled such high demand for support throughout the storm.
“We call it a million-dollar storm for the farmers and ranchers around here to take care of the drought," Yowell said about the moisture that came with the snow. “It's been many, many, many years since we've had one in November like this. These are normally our March and April-type blizzards.”
There are 17 volunteer firefighters in Limon and six police officers, according to Perry and Yowell.
“For fire, it was a lot of chaos the first day and then the next two days that followed. It was just a matter of knowing where we needed to be," said Perry. “[In] some places, it was getting stranded motorists. [In] some places, it was making sure people had supplies and groceries to make it through the night. [On] other days, it was helping EMS. It was just really being where we were needed at the time, and it just consistently changed.”
Yowell estimated there were 30 missions to help stranded motorists during the storm. He said the Colorado National Guard helped with a dozen of them.
“This would probably be one of the first snowstorms, major ones like this, that we actually set up an incident command for. And we had our EMS, or our emergency management system, set up with it. We were linked into the state, so we had some state resources. We had National Guard resources. And we all linked through that," Yowell explained. “I'm sure we've got some lessons to be learned out of this one without a doubt, but for the most part, I think it went off really, really well.”
Yowell and Perry estimate that on the first night of the storm, approximately 3,000 people were stranded in Limon. As of 2023, according to the US Census Bureau, the Town of Limon has a population of 2,002 people.
Yowell said there are roughly 500 hotel rooms in the town, which were overwhelmed by the amount of people searching for a place to stay. Three shelters were set up in Limon, along with one in Hugo, to provide overnight space for people.
“We're kind of centrally located between Denver and the Kansas border, and we have six or seven highways that either dump or come through Limon," Yowell said, explaining why so many people ended up in Limon. “That first night, we had 1,000 semis around here — they've got a job to do, too. We understand that, and they want to get on the road and get their delivery done or whatever they want to do. It's like, 'Yeah, I know you do, but we're not opening the road just for that.'”
Perry said this was her first big storm as the fire chief.
“A couple of the lessons that we took as firefighters is just that, yes, the people on the road are important, and the emergencies out there are important, but keeping our community fed, nourished, making sure everybody was safe was just as big of a priority. I don't think we realized that until we started shoveling driveways, and that people have been stuck in their houses," said Perry.
Both said they would not turn down more resources in Limon, but said they would be better served by hiring more people instead of acquiring more equipment since it would be difficult to find the space to store it.
Perry said the Town of Limon is accustomed to large storms, and the community supports the first responders in whatever way they can.
“We all know our neighbors, even if they live three miles down the road. [It's] enough to know, 'Oh, they have cattle here. They have some other kind of livestock here. They're going to need a bale of hay because they can't get in and out of their driveway.' And so, it's just allocating resources," Perry said. “Farmers [and] ranchers around here all usually have big tractors. They'll come in and help, as well as town crews, the street crew for the Town of Limon. And everybody just starts moving and trying to get where we can get. We make sure our ambulance and our fire can get out and police can get around.”
On Monday, both Yowell and Perry finally had the chance to catch their breath after an exhausting week. The two hope November's storm is not indicative of what's to come this winter — even though the forecast predicts more snow in Limon early next week.
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