Montana Highway Patrolman Glen Stevens made the first probe up the
Madison Valley after the quake. In response to a request for help from
Madison County Sheriff Lloyd Brooks in Virginia City, Stevens and Deputy
Sheriff "Dutch" Buhl wheeled down to Ennis, arriving at about 2:30
o'clock. The telephone lines were out. It seemed important to warn
people farther up the valley of the danger they were in. Some of the
folks had already fled. One ranch family was still in bed. There were
three groups of sleeping campers. They didn't argue or waste time. When
Stevens suggested they get out, they just left.
As Stevens and Buhl proceeded up the valley, they radioed in at frequent
intervals that everything seemed normal. They reported rock on the road
at various intervals from 26-mile hill on south to the place above
Hutchins Bridge, where boulders tumbling from a rock cliff made the road
impassable. Cabin camp operator Otto Kirby had got his people out, but
there were two house trailers parked farther up, near the river. Stevens
warned the occupants, and got them started out. They gassed up at
Kirby's ranch. It was cloudy and dark. At 3:15 o'clock Stevens radioed
in that the water was muddy but otherwise seemed OK, and that he planned
to cross the bridge and drive up along the river on an old road on the
south side. Sheriff Brooks tried to discourage them, shouting via
radio--"Don't do it, you crazy bastards, the dam's broke, and you'll get
killed too. Come back!"
It was this message which, picked up on other radios, and relayed to
Helena, sparked CD director Hugh Potter to order the evacuation of
Ennis.
With Sheriff Brooks's warning fresh in mind, Stevens says, "Every turn
we got off that bench, I thought we were going to meet swimming water."
[Illustration: These huge boulders crashed down onto Cliff Lake
Campground killing the Lloyd Strykers of San Mateo, California,
without disturbing the food on their campsite table.
(U. S. Forest Service)]
As they moved up the valley, they got the message that a couple of
people had been killed in the campground at Cliff Lake, to the south of
the Madison, so when they hit the Raynolds Pass road, they headed that
way.
They got there at daybreak, about 4:45 A. M. They found that a rock
cliff had fallen across the road which ran along the lake, marooning the
campers.
At the campground they found two campers dead, killed in a bizarre and
gruesome accident. The E. H. Strykers of San Mateo, California, were
camped on an improved campsite, with a fire site, a picnic table, and a
place to park their car. Their three youngsters slept in a tent 100 feet
away. The quake dislodged huge, eight-ton chunks of rock, and set them
bounding downwards in a freakish, crescent shaped path, tearing the
ground, and toppling 60-year-old fir trees in their downward rush.
Nimbly, two of these boulders bounded over the picnic table, stacked
with food, and landed squarely on top of the sleeping bags in which the
Stryker parents slept.
[Illustration: Cliff Lake tragedy--another view.
(U. S. Forest Service)]
"It wasn't pretty," Stevens said. "But there wasn't anything we could
do. The rocks were too big to move, so we went down toward the Shaw
Ranch and got Frank Shaw to take his 4x4 truck up and move the rocks off
them.
"We drove back down to the highway to continue up to the canyon. In the
freshening daylight on the way down from the high bench back into the
valley we could see a couple of trailers down the highway near the mouth
of the canyon. A Fish and Game Commission plane flew over, radioing
something about an obstruction across the lower end of the canyon, and
having two to three hours to get the people out. We had no idea what
they meant. We got to the trailers. They wanted to know how to get
out--the next section of the highway was blocked with rocks and
boulders. We routed them across the river and out Raynolds Pass way into
Idaho.
"One of the guys said he thought there were a couple of people still
alive across the river. We got to the slide about 5:45 o'clock--the huge
pile of millions of tons of rock where the highway used to be. You
couldn't believe what you were looking at.
"Somebody said something about a 'little slide'.
"'Little!' I said to Dutch, 'I'd hate like hell to see a big one!'
"The after-shocks that kept happening--with rocks crashing down and dirt
and dust blowing up--didn't contribute to our peace of mind, either. But
we didn't have much time to look.
"We struggled across the river--the slide had stopped the water, but
left a muddy ooze and some water lying around in pools as much as three
feet deep. We found Mrs. Irene Bennett lying in the rocky stream bed.
She was cold and shivering. She didn't have a stitch on. Neither did her
son, Phillip, who was lying near her. Both of them were bruised and
bashed. The Bennett boy had a broken right leg, shoulder, etc. We put
Mrs. Bennett on an old wooden frame canvas cot and started across the
slippery river bed with her. She must have weighed 180. As we struggled
through the slippery muck she kept apologizing for causing us so much
trouble, and told us about her husband and three other children, the
other folks who were camped near her, and the tremendous spurt of wind
and mud that threw them out from under the slide. She told how she'd
come to--believing herself the only one of her family who'd survived.
Despairing, she heard Phil calling from a spot 75 feet away where the
water had thrown him. Their torn hands gave the story of the agonizing
effort these crippled survivors had made to drag themselves together
over the rocky stream bed.
"By radio we asked the Fish and Game Commission plane flying overhead to
go to Ennis and get Dr. Losee and fly him back, and land him on the
highway nearby. We didn't want to disturb Mrs. Bennett by moving her off
the cot, so we put her into a station wagon. Morris Staggers, who lives
nearby, showed up with an old iron bedstead, older than anyone there,
and heavier, too. I'll never forget the struggle we had carrying the
Bennett boy across on it.
[Illustration: Rescuers prepare to move body of T. Mark Stowe of
Sandy, Utah, who perished as he was thrown out from under the slide.
Note tremendous water damage and dry river bed.
(United Press International)]
"We took the Bennetts up to where the plane landed on the highway and
turned them over to the doctor. Returning to the slide area, the
increasing light made the slide seem even more formidable. That morning,
working with Fish & Game Commission, etc., we found all of the people
Mrs. Bennett had told us about except one. Like Mrs. Bennett and her
son, all of these bodies had been stripped of their clothing and showed
the effects of being beat to hell by wind and water. The coroner said
all five of them died by drowning. We never did find Mrs. Marilyn Stowe,
wife of Sandy, Utah elementary school music teacher T. Mark Stowe, whose
body we did find--she must still be under the slide.
"I just don't care to go through any more mornings like that," Stevens
said.