At 2:00 A. M. Potter called in Montana State Highway Engineer Fred
Quinnell, Don Brown of the Montana Fish and Game Department, and Captain
Alex Stephenson, Chief of the Montana Highway Patrol, to help sort out
the rumors in the tense hours ahead. At 2:15 A. M. George Barrett,
highway engineer in Bozeman, radioed to Helena Austin Bailey's report on
road conditions in the West Yellowstone area.
Another report from a road maintenance man in the Ennis area brought
some word of a rise in the Madison, way downstream from the Canyon. When
asked by phone, Jack Corette, president of the Montana Power Co., said
that he felt it unlikely that the dam had gone out. As a precautionary
measure to protect communities farther downstream on the Madison, an
immediate drawdown of Meadow Lake and Canyon Ferry reservoirs was begun.
At 2:53 Bozeman Sheriff Don Skeritt reported that through the ham radio
net that was rapidly taking up the slack in communications, he'd
messaged his deputy, Everett Biggs, in West Yellowstone. A short time
later he'd received word that there was still much violent shaking in
the area ... that the lake had gone down substantially ... and the dam
was still holding.
Associated Press sent a man over to CD HQ in Helena at 2:55 A. M., to
keep in touch with developments. At 3:15 o'clock, when out of the
communications box came the cry, "It's gone! It's gone!" it was
difficult to keep the press from rushing to the phones and announcing
nationally that the dam had collapsed. There was no confirmation, but
the impact of the moment impressed Potter to the extent that he
immediately called the marshal, George Hibert at Ennis, the first
settlement downstream from Hebgen Dam, and urged him to get the people
out.
The sirens blasted 15 times. As one crusty old Ennis evacuee, Ray
"Tuffy" Kohls, put it--"They wake you up in the middle of the g.d. night
with the story that the dam's going to go,--still the people packed up
and got out in pretty good order. Of course there was some confusion.
One guy grabbed a flashlight and a thermos of coffee. His wife got into
the car wearing a coat over her nightgown, and carrying a girdle she'd
been sewing on that evening."
Some of the evacuees drove over the hill to Madison County's exciting,
historical county seat town of Virginia City to wait out the expected
flood. But most Ennis folks spent the rest of the night perched in their
parked cars on a hillside overlooking the town--like penitents waiting
for Judgment Day.
[Illustration: Refugee family from Ennis stalk the streets of
historically fabulous Virginia City the morning after the quake.
(Ken Lewis--Montana Standard)]