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Garfield County, MT (Billings Gazette) — The value in helping a total stranger is not lost on Troy Witt.
The Sand Springs rancher and commercial trucker sat inside his rig at a Lockwood truck stop Friday morning, periodically taking calls on his cellphone as he coordinated donations to farmers and ranchers battered by record flooding more than 700 miles away in eastern Nebraska.
“It was in the back of my mind as soon as it happened,” Witt said, referring to the widespread flooding and destruction that continues in the wake of a “bomb cyclone” that swept through the Midwest last week.
He’s hoping to load up his 53-foot flatbed trailer with as much hay, fencing materials, water and other supplies as he can legally transport before hitting the highway and driving the more than 700 miles to the drop-off site in Columbus, Nebraska. Donations had begun trickling in, but Witt said he still has plenty of room, enough for at least a couple dozen more bales of hay.
When the Lodgepole Complex of wildfires scorched more than 270,000 acres of ranch land in Petroleum and Garfield counties in 2017, most of the ranch owned by Witt’s family was reduced to ashes overnight.
He’s still miffed that the event — at the time the largest wildfire burning in the U.S. — didn’t make much national news. But all the same, he said his cattle operation was kept afloat in large part by a steady stream of donated hay, sent by strangers from across Montana and as far away as Oklahoma.
“It was a big shock,” Witt said. “But it just made you feel good and re-upped your faith in humanity, to realize there’s still selfless people out there that’ll still do that. And a lot more than you’d think.”
Garfield County Disaster and Emergency Services echoed that sentiment on social media Thursday, urging county residents to contact Witt in the interest of “paying it forward to Nebraska after so many of us were on the receiving end of relief efforts during the Lodgepole fire.”
In the past day, ranchers from Roundup to Sidney have called Witt with offers of hay and other still-to-be-determined supplies, he said. He’ll head east once he secures enough to fill the drop-deck flatbed trailer, hopefully by Friday evening or Saturday.
Witt said he’s still looking for donations of hay, fence-building materials, food and water. Supplies need to be packaged either in crates or on plastic-wrapped pallets, however, so they can be tied down securely.
For those looking to donate, Witt may be reached, preferably by text message, at 406-977-2864.
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