Q&A: Emergency manager talks recent storms and damage

Editor's note: This is one in a continuing series of state-of-the-entity interviews with local officials. Dan Heerding has been the emergency management director for the city of Clovis since 2013.

Q: What has the last month been like for you? With all of these storms?

A: The 24th (of May) was an interesting night. That was an anomaly, absolutely. But they (three tornadoes) were two or more miles north of Grady, and one was along 209. So thankfully, there was nothing really there to damage. This type of weather is normally very typical. We haven't seen it for the last few years because of the weather pattern, La Nina.

So now we are in that transition to El Nino; we're in a neutral-ish pattern right now. I hate to say it, but it was almost a perfect storm for us with the rain, hail, and wind.

I don't want to downplay these last few weeks. The hail was some of the biggest I've seen hit Clovis, absolutely. Talking to the National Weather Service later that night, they estimated that we had 83 mph straight-line winds. With that hail and that, that did the bulk of our damage to our infrastructure here.

Q: Over the last month, what kind of damage did these storms create? Can you put a dollar amount to the damage, at least in Curry County?

A: Right now, I do not have a dollar amount. A new roof is anywhere from $15,000-$20,000. I found five of those pivot sprinklers knocked over. Last time I heard those were like $50,000 apiece. Thankfully, they weren't twisted up, they were just, you know, the wind hit them and knocked them over.

Vehicle fleet took a hit on our police department, fire department, because they were actually out and about in this weather. So you know, a lot of hail damage.

Curry County is still assessing the damages. We had an insurance adjuster out for the city looking. I couldn't even begin to fathom what this is going to rack up to. We did do a disaster declaration for Curry County, and it will be presented to the governor. Hopefully that will release some of the funds that we've used for overtime costs and building stuff on the public infrastructure.

Q: How do these storms we've had compare to other significant storms you remember?

A: The spring of 2014, we had this exact same weather pattern. It was kind of interesting because, one night, we had 5 inches of rain, and it really flooded everything. Greene Acres actually went over the road.

Earlier this year, we've had two significant windstorms. People forget that those straight-line winds can do just as much damage as the tornadic activities. In 2019 we had a good windstorm that did a lot of damage to public structures. An apartment complex lost the whole roof. We see it, it comes and goes.

Q: Have you ever seen this much rain in such a short span of time before? How much rain did the area get?

A: If this rain had spread out over a month and a half, it would have been great. I know the night of the 24th, Texico reported up to 7 inches of rain. Here in Clovis we had anywhere between 3 to 4 inches. Now of course, since the subsequent storms I'm sure it's probably doubled or tripled that amount. We're super saturated right now. So, any more rain is just going to pretty much run off and collect in the low areas again.

Q: Can you guesstimate how much longer these storms will continue with the weather pattern we're in?

A: Based on history, this is kind of like our monsoon seasonal flow type thing. So they'll come in and go out you know for a couple months until the monsoon season ends, which I think is officially in September.

Usually these are very typical throughout the summer. It depends on where that dry line is that forms over us. If we're on the front end of it, or the eastern edge, it's typically where we get the storms.

Q: What was the worst damage you saw?

A: I mean, you see windows knocked out. Those are the folks that had north-facing windows, at least on the 24th. Wheatfields, which is our long-term care facility up north; they have a lot of windows that are facing north boarded up. There's an apartment complex on Main Street facing Llano behind Roden Smith, and I was told the other day they had 49 windows knocked out.

The five pivot sprinklers are, of course, a huge agricultural loss. I have no idea of any crop damage from that hail, but I'm sure there's some crop damage. Our county roads, like CR 17, parts of it are not passable, because the water flows and cuts a ravine right through the road. Last I saw, it was about 6 feet deep.

Q: Do you have suggestions for those needing repairs caused by the storm?

A: If you have roof damage, please ensure you have a reliable licensed person to do your roof and that they pull a permit. There have been a couple instances in the community where the roof was damaged and they'll make a new claim, but the contractor that did the roof did not pull a permit from building safety. The insurance then is not going to honor a new claim, because it wasn't done legitimately.

Q: As emergency management director, how do you remain calm and help out when storms like this happen and everything around you is chaotic?

A: It's a learned skill. I'm retired from the military. So I've done fire service, I've been on the law enforcement side. You just have to take a deep breath and think things through and really see what's going on around you. Try not to have that initial knee-jerk reaction. A house, a car, ... its property ... it can be replaced. Hopefully we will have insurance for these physical items, but lives cannot be replaced.

- Compiled by Landry Sena, the Staff of The News