By Roy Ortega
No one expected a storm of such calamitous proportions. The year 1949 began ordinarily with little or no
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| S.V. Ortega Aboard an Air Force C-46 |
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| S.V. Ortega Prepares for Air Drop over Oklahoma |
At Randolph Air Force Base near San Antonio, Texas, Ortega spent most of his duty time training for his role as a reserve maintenance specialist and loadmaster aboard a C-46 Skytrain cargo plane. The plane was attached to the 4th Air Force Reserve Region at Randolph. Like everyone else in Texas, Ortega paid little or no attention to the massive Arctic winter storm gathering strength in Northwestern Canada thousands of miles away.
Blizzard of the Century
According to National Weather Service records, the first in a series of snowstorms made its appearance
in North Dakota on the morning of January 2, 1949. As the storm approached the Texas-Oklahoma area, residents began to worry. "The wind kept getting stronger and the snow heavier as the day went on, and by evening the blizzard was at its full fury," said Oklahoma resident Helen Sides. By the time it was over six weeks later, the entire length of the country from Northern California to the Southeastern U.S. had been buried in mounds of snow and ice. Cities
were choked with snowbanks as high as 40-feet and traffic came to a standstill. Even the City of Los Angeles received several inches of snow, a strange rarity for residents. In the rural areas of the Midwest, farmers and ranchers struggled mightily to keep their stranded livestock fed. Emergency announcements for assistance rang throughout the country. Nothing moved for days.
Help from Above
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| Ortega aboard a C-46 Cargo Plane |
At Randolph where the weather remained relatively calm, Ortega and the crew of his plane were ordered to begin preparations for air drop operations over North Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arizona. Operation Hayride/Haylift was about to commence. A call had gone out earlier for tons of supplies, equipment and bales of hay for stranded cattle. "We loaded up all of the materials and flew north," said Ortega. "But when we arrived in the area of operations, we couldn't find the exact location of the livestock." Ortega said the crew was forced to push hay bales out, not knowing if the cattle could reach them. They learned later that their drops had in fact hit their target.
According to Air Force archives, a total of 40-humanitarian Airlift operations and 23-hay bale sorties
were flown over a five-county area of the Texas Panhandle in just one day.
Headlines across the country lauded the success of the Air Force air drop operations during the 1949 Blizzard. Historically, these operations were seen as the government's solid commitment to providing humanitarian relief in times of critical disasters, a commitment that continues to this day.
During his life, Ortega often expressed his pride in the role he played in helping snowbound residents overcome the effects of the powerful Blizzard of 1949.
Roy Ortega may be reached at rortega54@elp.rr.com. All comments are welcome.
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Links:
vol-29-no-4-its-going-down-in-history.pdf
Blizzard of 1949 - Nebraska State Historical Society
The Worst Blizzard In Utah Ever Happened In 1949
What America learned from the sweeping Great Plains blizzards of 1949 | News | buffalobulletin.com
