[Illustration: Road repairs.]
By 3:45 o'clock the highway department was in full action. Major road
repair help was on the way to get the roads open. George Barrett at the
department's Bozeman HQ called Spike Naranche of the Naranche & Konda
contracting outfit, which was building a big stretch of road in the
Gallatin Valley, about forty miles north of West Yellowstone, and got
their big-scale road-building equipment rolling toward West Yellowstone
and the Hebgen Dam area. There was still no definite idea of the exact
damage or the road blockage, but they'd begun to suspect major damage to
the dam, the roads, or both. If the Highway Department couldn't use the
equipment for road repairs, the Power Company could for dam repair.
Pilot Ralph Cooper took off in the Fish and Game Commission plane at
3:45 A. M. from Helena to reconnoiter the Madison area. Shortly
thereafter Quinnell and Alex Stephenson took off in the Highway
Department's plane.
With daybreak came the first word on just what had happened. At 6
o'clock the planes reported (CA-1) as recorded in the Highway
Department's log.
"Slide area 43 mi. so. of Ennis. White sign on the top of dam reading
OK-SOS. Road has gone into the lake on the road side. Mountain has gone
into lake on opposite side. Cracks 6 to 8 ft. across the road. Slide is
estimated to be 1/2 mi. long and 300-500 ft. deep. Water rising fast.
About 50 cars stranded in the area. Estimated 150-200 people. The only
way out by helicopter."
Potter immediately called Johnson Flying Service, a pioneer regional
flying outfit in Missoula, 200 miles from the slide, and ordered a
helicopter for rescue work. He also asked for helicopter assistance from
Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls, Montana, 190 miles to the
north. Malmstrom's rescue copter had blown a tire the day before, so
they sent a jet to Salt Lake for a new one. Potter hollered for
helicopters on the National Alert Warning System hot line.
"How many do you need?" he was asked.
"All you can get," he answered.
In response, everything, flying amphibians, transports, in addition to
helicopters, started moving toward the quake area--from the 41st Air
Rescue Squadron, Hamilton Air Force Base in California, the 2849th Air
Base Wing Rescue, Hill Air Force Base, Utah, the 3638th Flying Training
Squadron, Stead AFB, Nevada, and the 4061st Support Group, Malmstrom
AFB, Montana.
The Forest Service began moving in its well-organized rescue
organization that morning, under the direction of Harvey Robe. Eight of
the FS's elite smokejumpers, trained in first aid, jumped in the canyon
at 10:30 o'clock, with rescue equipment under the leadership of Al
Hammond.
"When we made our parachute landings," Hammond remembers, "The folks we
came to rescue asked us, solicitously, if we were OK."
The rescue of the people trapped in the canyon--it turned out that there
were close to 300--proceeded smoothly. The Osts, Fredericks, and Smiths,
all ambulatory, if shoeless were helicoptered out to the highway on the
Ennis side of the slide, and taken in highway patrol cars to the
hospital or to the dormitory improvised in the high school gym. The
injured who'd been gathered at the Hebgen Dam end of the canyon were
helicoptered out to West, and flown to the hospital in Bozeman.
[Illustration: The slide that blocked Madison Canyon, dammed the
river, and brought terror and tragedy to those at Rock Creek
Campground as viewed from the valley side. (U. S. Forest Service)]
Working continuously through the day, without provisions for meals,
etc., the road repair crews "barbered" a shoo-fly substitute exit road
along the steep mountainside parallel to the shore where the road had
collapsed into the lake. By 6:00 P. M. they'd completed a passable road.
The State Highway Patrol registered the cars as they exited from their
entrapment in the Madison Canyon. When all the unencumbered cars had
passed through, the bulldozers helped pull those with trailers over the
most difficult portions of the substitute road. That night the refugees
were welcomed to food and beds in the Montana State College gym in
Bozeman.
Within eighteen hours after the initial shock, the last of those trapped
by the earthquake in the difficult-to-reach Madison Canyon were on their
way to safety. The wounded had been rescued hours before. As George
Sime, information guy for the Highway Department and for CD, said,
"That day anyone would have been proud to be a member of the Highway
Department."
The whole operation ran smoothly--it was a tremendous example of
government service in the finest tradition--a demonstration of agencies
working together to do an important job.
[Illustration: Where the mountain fell--as viewed from helicopter
approximately over the site of the buried area right next to Rock
Creek Campground. (Montana Power Company)]
[Illustration: Overturned automobile.]
Nobody held back. They put in all the personnel, and spent all the money
needed to get it done.
"When we knew lives were at stake," Forest Service Region 1 Chief
Charles Tebbe said, "We didn't worry about the cost or what
appropriation it would come from. We just went ahead and did the job."
Quinnell, head of the Montana Highway Department, took the same
attitude.
It wasn't until three days after the quake that anyone mentioned the
fact that no one, including Potter, actually had authority for much of
the work they'd done. It belonged to the sheriffs of the counties
involved. By this time the emergency job was practically done. All that
remained was to figure up the damage.
[Illustration: Two of the road drop-offs, and the shoo-fly, or
improvised escape road built the day after the quake trapped 300
vacationers in Hebgen Canyon. (Christopherson)]
[Illustration: (Bottom Forest Service)]