Natural disasters, like the Montana-Yellowstone Earthquake, are perhaps
the best test of our Civil Defense readiness. Until the quake, CD
Director Hugh Potter wasn't at all sure that he had an outfit at all.
Operating on a short budget of $21,000 a year, with all of the third
biggest, sprawled-out state to organize, he'd set up, at least on paper,
state-wide and county CD groups. He'd compiled an exhaustive inventory
of state facilities, resources, etc., complete to such minutiae as the
number of aspirins in the state (1,657,000 5-gr. tablets), and the
amount of meat Montana's abundant wildlife represented (58,517,725 lbs.,
including 1,000 bison, 415 grizzly bears).
The alerts he'd organized weren't notable successes, and he'd caught
some hell from the higher-ups for not being current on the state-wide
alerts which are supposed to be held at least once a year.
"Our people just aren't too enthusiastic about practice alerts," Potter
says. "Frankly, they feel it's a waste of time. They're busy. They don't
want to play war. A guy will say, 'I want to go fishing, or put up a hay
crop, or something.'
[Illustration: Vertical fault line.]
"But let a real emergency happen and they're right there.
[Illustration: Real shook--the interior at the colorful Virginia
City Courthouse the morning after the quake.
(Lewis--Montana Standard)]
"During that first day Ed Cottingham and I were busy pulling triggers. I
realized then that the most important thing I'd done during my seven
years as CD director was getting around and getting to know who to
phone--the people you can count on to get something done in an
emergency. You can get the heck of a lot done if you know the right guy
to call.
"There isn't a CD department that didn't check in right away to find out
if they were needed.
"We're especially lucky to have the U. S. Forest Service (the big slide
happened in the Beaverhead National Forest) in our area. Their
experience and constantly organized readiness to meet the threat of
forest fires right now makes them an ideal outfit for any emergency.
Forest Service firefighting squads, transport, equipment, and
information about the area are all set up to move in a matter of
minutes. They're most adaptable to the kind of crisis the earthquake
threw at us.
"You can tell the Forest Service your problem and quit worrying.
"Another important outfit is the Montana Forestry Department, which is
set up to administer and protect the state's forests. Its boss, Gareth
Moon, is head of the CD's Rural Firefighting Section.
"We have a good, mobile law enforcement outfit in the Montana Highway
Patrol. The Montana Fish and Game Dept. men, in emergency, serve as an
excellent backwoods force.
"Frank Wiley, Montana Dept. of Aeronautics director and one of the real
pioneer pilots who can still fly anything from a jet to a Jenny, took
over our flying problems."
At 8:45 A. M., as part of a CD emergency plan called "Operation
Bulldozer," set up by the Associated General Contractors, Jack Marlowe,
secretary of the Montana Contractors' Assn., had completed a list and
location of all heavy construction equipment in the area and reported
that all contractors were on standby in case they were needed.
The State Dept. of Health was on the ball, too. They were moving in
personnel to test water in Ennis, West Yellowstone and throughout the
quake area by 9:00 the morning after the quake.
At 9:15 word came in that the Red Cross was flying in emergency
personnel from the west coast.
Potter was thrilled by the offers of help that kept CD HQ phones busy.
General Keith R. Barney of the Army Corps of Engineers called offering
any help needed. The governors of Idaho and Wyoming and three Canadian
provinces asked if there was anything they could do. Idaho's highway
patrol actually came up and helped keep things under control in the West
Yellowstone area.
[Illustration: CD garage and trucks.]
Several search and rescue outfits called, offering aid. A combined Army,
Navy and Marine Corps Reserve unit from Butte gathered their medical
equipment and ambulances and sped to the Ennis side of the slide as a
voluntary, unpaid action.
There were offers from the crack mine rescue teams from the famous
Anaconda Company mines in Butte. When a call went out on the regular
radio for housing for the Ennis evacuees, several hundred accommodations
were phoned in to a local Butte station. Another abortive suggestion
that men on horseback might be needed to search some of the impassable
back country brought over a hundred volunteers in less than an hour. A
Bozeman station was overwhelmed with offers in response to an
announcement that station wagons would be needed at the airport to
ambulance the wounded to the hospital.
[Illustration: Road blocked by boulders.]
Nurses, doctors, National Guardsmen, skindivers--they all called in
wanting to help.
At Great Falls, where the Montana Red Cross Blood Bank was holding a
regularly scheduled drawing, when word came that they were flying blood
to Bozeman to help the victims, so many volunteers showed up that the
total exceeded 450 pints, and at closing time 150 donors were still in
line.
"We had special problems--distance from any sizeable town was one. I'd
hate to think of the casualties if the quake hit in a really populated
area," Potter said.
"The mountains, which obstruct short-wave signals and set up all sorts
of radio blind spots, made it difficult to get any sort of ground radio
communication going. It was impossible from the ground, to signal to
Ennis or to Hebgen Dam from West Yellowstone. The radio amateurs did a
tremendous job of helping those first few hours--they set up a standby
network and kept it clear for emergency messages. One ham, Father
Francis A. Peterson, (W7RKI), from St. Anthony, Idaho, one of the first
to report the quake, loaded up his gear, drove to West Yellowstone, and
by 7:45 A. M. the morning after the quake had set up radio control at
the otherwise radioless West Yellowstone Airport. Another ham, Harold L.
Beddor, (W7JPD), of Dillon, Montana, handled emergency communications
from Dillon the day after the quake, then flew his equipment to the West
Yellowstone Airport to help out too.
"The problem was complicated by the multiplicity of wave lengths on
which the various civilian and military agencies were operating. We
discovered that the high frequency bands the Civil Defense uses (150
megacycles) are useless in mountain country, especially in the day time.
Lower frequencies, 34.82 and 46.86 megacycles did get through.
"All that first day or so, we relied on the Highway Department plane,
which was radio-equipped, to get messages across the quake area. It
stayed in the air all day.
"The mountain altitude (at the dam the elevation is 6,550 ft.),
presented aviation difficulties, too. Smaller helicopters couldn't make
it, and some of the bigger jobs were tricky to fly in the less dense
mountain air.
"We had difficulty with aerial sightseers. In spite of our announcement
that the fields at West Yellowstone and Ennis were closed to all but
emergency aircraft, planes flew in from all over. Charter pilots flew in
from as far away as Arizona, and did a brisk business in flying the
curious over the quake area at $6 a head. Including the Air Force ships,
during the first few days the West Yellowstone Airport was as busy as
Chicago's Midway Field, with planes taking off and landing at the rate
of one a minute. With all the traffic over the slide area, it was a
miracle that we got through that first week without a crash.
[Illustration: Fallen trees.]
"But as a result of the quake we know that any area which has this kind
of emergency will make out OK with the wonderful spirit of people,
helping and wanting to help."