The Star - News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area

Hearing the deadly dust storm on Monday caused me some alarm. The storm was reported to be in Indiana, where I have a close friend. 

So I called Warner Bartleson, who is well known in the coulee. Warner was hospital administrator here for four years in the early 1990s, during the struggle to save the hospital.

Warner said they had the wind, but no dust. However, the area was visited by four tornadoes recently. Warner’s wife, Sara, had recently suffered a bad fall and is still recovering from that.

He remarked that the years he was here were remarkable years.

The major highway dust traffic incident saw dust so thick it caused cars and trucks to pile into each other.

I had experienced a similar dust incident a few years ago, coming back from Chelan. Farmers had been busy preparing the soil for spring planting when a powerful wind came up.

I understand what people mean when they say you can’t see your hand in front of your face. I was afraid of running into someone or having someone run into me. I got off the highway as soon as I could.

A few years earlier, I had another incident, this time with black ice. 

Five of us were driving to Kansas City, Missouri, for a conference. The owner of the car wanted me to drive when we hit an area with black ice. We were moving along pretty fast because there was concern about getting to Kansas City in time for the start of the conference. 

I was driving and the owner was sitting up front with me, trying to get me to drive faster. Every once in a while, he would reach his foot over on top of mine in an effort to speed up.

We came over a hill and looking down all I could see was a pile of cars and trucks all over the place. I immediately moved the car over to the right hoping to catch some gravel along the side of the road. All the while, I was tapping my brakes a little. I was able to get stopped just short of the pileup. The long delay kept us from making KC in time, but we were there for the start the next day.

I never had any problem with driving at a reasonable speed again.

The problem with black ice is you can’t see it. So it is easy for me to understand why we have such bad accidents in both dust and winter storms.

Warner extends his very best wishes to all his friends here.