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Issue: 12/18/09 Mishandling of wild horses on US-50 in Nevada and the resulting auto accident.
Priority: INFORMATIONAL
Situation Report Summary:
Background.
Much of Nevada is open range where wildlife, livestock and wild horses could appear at any time on state highways. Citizens ordinarily help keep livestock and wild horses away from busy roadways, however there are a few individuals who ignore common sense and the law. They actually entice horses into urban areas with food. One notorious location for such activities is the Carson City suburb of Moundhouse. [Citation: Local "Do Gooders" Spoil Wild Bands, KBR Wild Horse & Burro News]
Wild horses dine on hay dumped alongside State Route 341 near the intersection of US-50.
Horses and highways clearly don't mix. In 2005 A public information effort by local horse advocates and the media helped reduce the most blatant feeding of horses near traffic arteries. Nonetheless on Friday Morning, December 18, 2009, a yet to be identified man in a tan pickup truck spread hay alongside a busy 4-lane stretch of US-50 on the Carson City side of the Carson / Lyon County line. The ultimate outcome was predictable.
Before long a band of horses that roamed the open range to the north of the highway discovered the hay and either made their way through or around a dilapidated boundary fence. Shortly afterwards citizens began reporting horses on the highway.
A Nevada Highway Patrol Trooper and a Lyon County Sheriff's Lieutenant arrived on the scene. They were soon met by experienced horse volunteers James and Karen Mayfield. The horses were still eating the hay that had been dumped, but once they finished the horses would start moving between the fence line and fast moving lanes of traffic.
The Mayfields suggested opening the fence and pushing the horses back through. This was a practical option since the fence had been either cut or had failed in various locations and could be opened at the previous repair points. According to the Mayfields, the trooper dismissed that idea, explaining that the horses could jump the fence. The trooper then threw snowballs at the horses which stirred them up, but of course none attempted to jump the fence.
Being out of his jurisdiction, the Lyon County officer left the scene. The NHP trooper asked the Mayfields to leave. The trooper apparently then left, leaving a band of about eight horses on the shoulder of one of the area's busiest surface highways.
The location where the horses were present was particularly conducive to an accident. The highway breaks over a hill, is curved, and passes under a railroad overpass so visibility is limited. The speed limit changes from 45 MPH to 55 MPH so traffic is typically traveling at the greater speed. Road conditions, particularly at night, were icy. Furthermore a temperature inversion was producing heavy fog each night.
Throughout the day various citizens stopped and turned on their emergency flashers to warn approaching motorists when the milling horses got close to traffic lanes. However, nobody in authority responded to organize the relocation of the horses to the range side of the fence. Volunteers considered organizing an effort to remove the horses themselves, however the agreed upon procedure on busy highways is that volunteers wait for someone in authority to be on hand supervise such activities and to ensure appropriate traffic controls during removal efforts.
Authorities finally did respond, en masse, after a horse was struck in the dark and lay on the roadside with broken legs. Aside from a motorist and the horse avoiding the trauma of an accident on a busy highway, the euthanasia and removal of the struck horse, accident investigation and related activities required a great deal more effort by NHP and NDoT than it would have taken to originally have prevented the accident in the first place.
The universal question that followed was, "How could the horses have been left alongside the highway for nearly 24 hours?"
The Lyon County Sheriff's Lieutenant provided some insight. Since the incident was on a state highway and in another county, he had no authority over the situation and simply offered assistance to the NHP Trooper. He was given the sense that the situation was in-hand and that the "Brand Inspector" from the Nevada Department of Agriculture had been dispatched to deal with the horses.
For clarification, the free-roaming horses in the region that range north of the Carson River fall under the jurisdiction of the Nevada Department of Agriculture (NDoA.) One of the department's brand inspectors had been assigned the full time job of managing the herd and dealing with issues such as horses that get through fences or wander onto public property such as highways, schools and community parks. This "Brand Inspector" carried out his duties with the assistance of trustees from the Northern Nevada Correctional Center and experienced wild horse volunteers.
"The old days."
Brand Inspector / Horse Manager Mike Holmes and volunteers
get a foal back onto the "right side" of a roadside fence.
Apparently unbeknownst to the officers on the scene, the "Brand Inspector" who would have ordinarily handled this situation had been laid off the previous summer in one of the rounds of state budget cuts. Another part time inspector whose duties were to clear and record brands of livestock for sale and transportation, not dealing with free-roaming horses, would respond on those occasions when he was in the area and available. However in this instance he was out of the area inspecting cattle. Eventually the part time inspector did receive a call from someone from BLM who had somehow gotten involved. The part time inspector advised the caller that he was not available and advised the caller to contact two of the wild horse volunteers to get assistance. Calls to those volunteers were apparently never placed.
Night fell and the horses were still milling about on the side of the roadway.
Early the next morning a whole "menu" of emergency and DOT resources responded to the highway as a horse had gotten into traffic and was struck.
What went wrong?
The area does involve open range and animals of every description can find their way onto the highway. However if privately owned livestock are either stranded or are wandering on a public highway, the owner is contacted and told to remove the animals or, if the owner cannot be located, some effort is made to mitigate the problem. In this instance the "owner" of the animals is the Nevada Department of Agriculture, an agency that has apparently made no provision to carry out its responsibilities when its horses wander onto highways.
There appears to have been a lack of communication between the Nevada Department of Agriculture and other public agencies that might have to deal with horse problems. While the Department has not had a "Horse Manager" for six months, most officials are under the belief that someone responsible for the horses would respond and deal with the situation. It appears possible that the NHP officer who left the horses unsupervised held a belief that someone from NDoA would be responding.
That said, out of the numerous state and local law enforcement and Department of Transportation personnel who passed the horses alongside the road, hour after hour, someone should have figured out that the problem was not being resolved.
While it is arguable that such a scene should not have been left unsupervised, this avoidable accident appears to have been precipitated by a breakdown in communications and by expectations that were no longer valid with respect to what services could be relied upon from NDoA. The NHP appears to be taking this incident seriously as the agency does not want to experience a repeat event.
Aside from the problem that under the current administration nobody actually seems to be in charge of the Virginia Range horses, two other factors have to be considered. Removing the horses that frequent the area would not provide a lasting solution. Horses disburse throughout their territories and additional horses would move in to the vacated territory. The "replacement" horses could be less road savvy than the ones removed.
Secondly, free-roaming horses only comprise part of the problem. One of the reasons that the part time inspector wasn't available was that while he was booked solid with brand inspections, he was also involved helping get stray cattle off a state highway in another county. Within hours of the horse accident in Carson City, a domestic yearling colt was spotted running through US-50 traffic in Central Lyon County. In this latter incident, a quick thinking Lyon County Animal Control Officer managed to herd the spooky horse away from the highway and into the Animal Shelter yard where it was safely contained, held, and retrieved by its owner.
The cattle and domestic colt incidents were similarly hazardous to traffic, but those incidents concluded favorably because nobody left the hazards in an unresolved state.
Hopefully lessons will be learned from the unfortunate horse strike incident.
- Hay or other feed, either intentionally placed or accidentally dropped, cannot be left alongside open range highways in areas frequented by horses and livestock.
- Horses and livestock that turn up between boundary fences and traffic lanes constitute real traffic hazards. If startled they are more likely to run into traffic than try crossing a fence. At minimum they need to be moved to an unfenced area. Ideally they need to be moved to where a barrier separates them from fast moving traffic.
- Responding agencies cannot rely on the Nevada Department of Agriculture to respond and deal with its horses. They have to consider calling on animal control agencies and private resources for assistance.
- Requests for assistance have to be formally acknowledged. Such communications are expected between public safety agencies. When dealing with non-emergency agencies, greater emphasis should be placed on accurately determining if responsible personnel from the requested agency are actually going to respond, and if so, their ETA. If a timely response cannot or does not occur, then alternative strategies must be considered.
- Responders cannot assume that horses or private livestock confined between fences and traffic lanes will relocate themselves. The motivation to reach easy hay could outweigh the animal's reluctance to walk by fast moving traffic. Once fed, the horses may be reluctant to leave by walking past oncoming traffic. Livestock unfamiliar with an area could be spooked into a confined location, and once bunched up there be reluctant to move back out alongside traffic. The mere fact that animals walked into a hazardous situation cannot be considered as a predictor that they are likely to walk back out.
- The motoring public must remember that every mile of open range highway brings with it the potential for very large animals to get out into traffic lanes. Therefore necessary defensive driving skills include leaving safe following distances between vehicles, staying focused on driving, always taking in the "big picture" when driving, adjusting speeds as necessary for actual driving conditions, and not assuming that the only risks out on Nevada's open range highways are dust storms, ice and the other drivers.
Reporting emergencies and safety hazards
Anyone with a mobile phone who comes upon an accident or observes a significantly hazardous condition on state and interstate highways can simply dial *NHP (star-N-H-P) and be connected with the appropriate NHP communications center. If you are reporting road hazard, you should be prepared to provide specific information regarding the kind of hazard, location on the highway including the direction of travel of the lane(s)involved, and be reachable on call-back if the responding agency needs additional details. If you are on an open highway with no recognizable cross streets, you can provide information from the closest white "paddle marker" or green "mileage marker" that appears on the shoulder of the highway.
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