1964 Flood: Worst Flood in Montana's History Left Death, Destruction

1964 flood: Worst flood in Montana's history left death, destruction Karl Puckett, [email protected] 9:26 a.m. MDT May 29, 2014 Phillip Rattler visits the Holy Family Mission Cemetery where victims of the 1964 flood are buried. Rattler attempted to save several people who were trapped on a pickup truck after the Two Medicine River overflowed its banks. “I guess I feel like I didn’t do enough,” he said.(Photo: TRIBUNE PHOTO/RION SANDERS) BROWNING – Phillip Rattler, also called Papoose, inspects gravestones beneath white crosses at a Catholic cemetery 14 miles south of here off of U.S. Highway 89, where the Rocky Mountains, still holding snow, look sugar glazed. "This is '64 here," says Rattler, pausing and noting the death date carved into one. "'64 here,'" he says at another grave, as he recites the year again and again while walking down rows. The 1964 flood in Montana claimed 31 lives, many of them children and all but one on the Blackfeet Reservation. Its 50th anniversary is June 7 and June 8. Rattler personally watched several people disappear. They were trapped in a flatbed truck that was being engulfed by the rising Two Medicine River south of Browning. He recently visited the cemetery where several of the victims are buried, noting that he never felt more helpless than he did on that day a half century ago. The Holy Family Mission Cemetery on Joe Show East Road near Browning where victims of the 1964 flood are buried. In all 30 people died on the Blackfeet Reservation and another man died in Augusta. (Photo: TRIBUNE PHOTO/RION SANDERS) "I used to see them screaming and hollering in my sleep," Rattler said. Rattler wasn't alone in feeling powerless. The infamous flood 50 years ago overwhelmed streams and rivers draining out of the Rocky Mountains, forcing the evacuation of 8,700 people, according to a report on the flood by the U.S. Geological Service. The greatest damage was concentrated in an area bounded by the Dearborn River on the south, Interstate 15 on the east between Great Falls and Helena, the Middle Fork of the Flathead River and Glacier National Park on the north and the Flathead River on the west, a 12,000-square-mile area with the Continental Divide running through it. On June 7 and June 8, biblical rains pounded higher-than-average mountain snow pack causing what the National Weather Service says is the worst flood on record in Montana. When it was over, damage totaled $62 million which, adjusted for inflation, would total $474 million today, according to the U.S. Geological Survey and state Department of Natural Resources and Conservation. More than $30 million of the damage occurred in communities on the eastern Front, from Glacier National Park and the Blackfeet Reservation south to northern Lewis and Clark County and as far east as Great Falls. Even 50 years afterward, it's worth remembering the flood, says Gina Loss, a hydrologist for the National Weather Service in Great Falls. "Any time you have that significant loss of life, it's just something you need to keep in mind that this did happen at one point," Loss said. "From the weather perspective, there's nothing saying that it couldn't happen again." State's flood season Mid-May to mid-June is flood season in Montana. This year, locations still exist where 30 to 40 inches of water remain locked in deep mountain snow that a prolonged rain or warm weather or heavy thunderstorm could quickly melt, Loss said. But to date, alternating cooler and warmer temperatures, and minimal precipitation, have kept spring runoff in check. It didn't happen that way in 1964. "Oh, it just roared," Warren Harding, 92, said of the Sun River, one of many streams and rivers that flooded in northwestern and northcentral Montana. Harding is a retired National Weather Service meteorologist who was the lead forecaster on duty in Great Falls at the time of the flood. In a typical year, streams and rivers that meander out of the mountains are harnessed for irrigation, making the prairie bloom with wheat and barley and grasses and hay for livestock. Prior to 1964, serious flooding had occurred in 1927, 1938, 1948 and 1953. But as John Fassler writes in the book "Montana Weather," the intensity of a rainstorm on June 7 and June 8, 1964, made the flood that year the most devastating and spectacular on record. Heavy snowpack in the mountains was released in the extreme rainfall, which fell an inch an hour. The heavy rainfall was produced from the collision of moist air from the Gulf of Mexico, an upper level low-pressure system approaching from the west and surface high pressure and associated cold air sliding down from the north. "It's just a really good example of what can happen when all the ingredients come together in the wrong way," Loss said. Loss said it's possible that a similar flood today might result in less loss of life. Technological advances have improved forecasting and weather reporting and thus warnings. In 1964, for example, river gauge readings were recorded by charts and a network of observers who lived near streams and rivers, she said. Unless a call was received from an observer, there was no way of knowing what the stream was doing without a U.S. Geological Survey official going out and reading the chart. Now, river gauge readings are collected and then transmitted via satellite every hour so the Weather Service sees real-time stream conditions, Loss said. And communication is better too, especially with the advent of social media. "I think they did the best job they could with the tools they had, but there's not much you can do when you have dams failing," Loss said. "Once that happens, you are at the mercy of Mother Nature." Water overflows dam West of Augusta, water rushed over the top of the 199-foot-high Gibson Dam, releasing a wave into the Sun River that flooded agricultural land and every community between the dam and Great Falls, a distance of 80 miles. A single acre foot of water equals 325,851 gallons and weighs 1.3 tons. Gibson Reservoir holds 99,000 acre-feet of water. That's what came rushing down the Sun River at farmers and ranchers and the communities of Fort Shaw, Simms, Sun River, Vaughn and Great Falls at a pace of 50,000 cubic feet per second. "It's hard to describe it," Harding said. Officials with what was then known as the Weather Bureau in Great Falls lost communication with Gibson Dam operators, the result of flood-caused power outages, Harding said. At midnight, they lost touch with weather observers in Simms, which is 30 miles west of Great Falls. "They had been calling every hour because we really wanted to see what it peaked at," Harding said of the Sun River observers. "The last time they had said they had to go upstairs because it was starting to come into their house." At 3 a.m., June 9, Harding, who lived on a ranch above the river at Simms, finished his shift at the Weather Bureau in Great Falls, hopped in his Volkswagen and headed west. His mission was to check the river gauge on the Sun River so he could report the crest. At the community of Sun River, he encountered a foot of water on the main highway. Motorists were pushing their vehicles. Harding detoured and used the Simms-Ashuelot Road, which is on higher ground, to reach Simms. He almost didn't make it across Blackfoot Creek, which was overtaking the road. "They float pretty easy," Harding said of Volkswagens. "I gunned it and it was kind of like a boat and the wheels propelled me across, but it was very stupid." Harding finally reached Simms and, on foot, climbed a hill above the Simms-Fairfield Bridge, which crosses the Sun River. The river gauge was under water. But from that vantage point, Harding snapped a photograph showing the river rushing across the main stringers of the bridge. It was cresting at an 13.7 feet high, which is 6 feet above flood stage. The photo also captured a helicopter in the sky. Its crew had just rescued the incommunicado Simms weather observers, who were plucked off the roof of their house. The rainfall map kept by the Weather Service of June 7-8 shows rainfall amounts in the teens across the Front over the two days of flooding, including 14 inches west of Choteau, and 16 inches west of Browning, amounts that Loss called incredible. The average rainfall for Great Falls for an entire year is 14.9 inches. "It's very difficult for us in Montana to forecast a rain event that could bring as much precipitation as this particular event did," Loss said. Blackfeet hard hit No area was harder hit than the Blackfeet Reservation. Of the 31 fatalities, 30 occurred on the reservation, where a wall of water as high as 20 feet was reported on Birch Creek. Dam failures on both Birch Creek and the Two-Medicine River releasing reservoirs of water onto unsuspecting victims downstream. "Well, we looked west, then we could see this big wall of water comin'," Eloise England said. "So I said, 'Well, go get way up high, as high as we could get.'" Today, England is 83. In 1964, she was 34, a rancher, wife and mother of six children.

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