DISASTER AT TETON

on June 5th 1976 the Teton Dam in Southeastern Idaho [Music] collapsed a wall of water rolled from behind the earthfill structure down the path of the tetan river when the water subsided nine people were dead another 2,000 homeless over 105,000 Acres of Farmland were damaged 16,000 head of livestock [Music] [Applause] [Music] lost the small town of Sugar City caught a crest of water 12 to 14 ft ft High Rexburg with a population of 7500 was next nearly 70% of the town was [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] flooded the water raced on 25 Mi Downstream from Rexburg Idle Falls residents braced for the water sandbagging began but in some cases did little good when the water finally reached the town a day later when the crest hit Blackfoot a shopping center became a lake the people in the flood's path talk about what happened oh this is the worst disaster we've ever had well I really didn't feel it hit this hard and when it did I was right out in front of it on the west side of uh on the north side of Rexburg right in front of it looks like a bloody mess it's it's terrible worst thing I've ever seen it's unbelievable you have to see it to believe it you can take pictures and show people pictures but they never believe it until they seen it themselves so it's frightening well it's just everybody's in kind of a shock I don't even think everybody really knows what the full impact is going to be yet well I was up at work you know working in uh St Anthony and then we uh I thought it was kind of a joke and then uh found out that one of the towns had been wiped out and then drove home really fast to try to get over the bridge just being scared especially not knowing whether he was going to make it over the you know make it home over the river because it was the flood was coming so fast and how else would you feel a disaster Center was established at Rick's College Chuck Frost of the college staff explains how it was done starting Saturday afternoon we threw the dormitories open and to all the people in town we've had about 2,000 people every night living in all the campus dormitories had National Guardsmen uh Power people telephone people plus uh people have been wased out of their homes living right here on campus [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh an immediate priority was reestablishing Communications with the outside world experts from AT&T's long lines department and Mountain Bell studied the Alternatives the answer six outgoing lines were hooked up via microwave into Idaho Falls one of the lines was to be used for civil defense the other five for the people of Rexburg and Sugar City left homeless by the flood well for the first 24 hours it was a real touchy situation nobody could call anyone and uh yesterday when the phones came in everybody was real happy to have them now the five lines that are out have been pretty busy and we've advertised throughout the campus so people could go and call their loved ones tell them they were all [Music] right as the shock wore off little remained except to pitch in and dig [Music] out [Music] [Applause] [Music] a [Music] [Applause] to walk by and see an individual with most of their worldly possessions gone mud up to their shoulders yet with a smile on their face it's very gratifying to all of us who've had to work with these [Music] people these people have suffered a great loss and yet uh they are very optimistic they're going about very cheerful I've yet to see a tear in anyone's eye [Music] for Mountain Bell it was a massive [Music] job [Music] 40,000 telephone customers were affected by the flood waters one of the first to get news of the flood was Mountain Bell vice president and Idaho general manager Charles F Hall he sent a crew of 200 Idaho telephone people to the flooded area to get service restored Frank Bramley general manager of customer services was made on the scene coordinator bram's first task determine the condition of telephone facilities in the disaster area the people are really out of appreciated or the customers and I guess they will in their way I'd like to start naming names who are outstanding but you can't do it cuz they're all doing a damn good job uh just a brief overview uh of where we stand Chuck at the moment Rexburg is now fairly dry mud uh we would guess still again 60 to 70% of the houses are badly damaged or completely demolished all businesses in the downtown area are completely closed in fact we were surprised yesterday uh uh the banks have small uh I guess you'd call them small tractors or cats with shovels in front loaders inside of their buildings pushing the mud out to the streets Jack why don't you start uh we've got we we know that we have a lot of pairs on the frame that are both good and bad even though we have washed the switches down with the fire hose twice we have blown them out with air and we still have silt and we still have grass and weeds back in the back of the relays and in the banks and so on you'll be finding that for the next 2 years I hope it's only 2 years uh let me make a comment on the phone center we operated till 1:00 this morning uh it appears from preliminary count that uh from 10:00 till we closed it at 1: this morning when the people quit coming uh we put something like 700 calls through there on only five lines which I think must be some kind of a record I hate to sound like I'm soft but it uh really gets to you when you see those people finally get their relative someplace and start telling their life and they start crying and I'm glad we were able to give them that service uh Dean and I finally got into uh Sugar City yesterday afternoon difficult to get there that is wiped out there's not a house left there's not a business left it's just obliterated there's just pieces of houses stand around uh we tried to get to Roberts as I told you we're going to and we got with about 3 month miles of Roberts uh they still have between 3 and 4 ft of water Robert sits down in a pocket we visited with cidian Defence they're today going to make a decision of whether they going to try and cut a canal from Roberts into the river which is a hell of a big job or whether they can get pumps and pump Roberts out uh Ido Falls uh the of course we got all sandero and these Crews over here and uh when we arrived here this water at the location I'm standing on was about uh 3 ft over my head and Crossing that would make it over this bridge about 2 ft washing large Timbers on it and the highway department civil defense in order to save the bridge had decided to dig a large Channel around it here that we're standing in to reroute the water in this reroute area we had several large cables and a load manhole and uh the local lineman here had uh attempted to support these cables with poles break the conduit off of them in order to uh avoid what we finally ended up severing the cables at the peak of the water there was so much water being held back it was pushing it into the motel and hotels along this river bank and so the civil defense people and the highway department and the Civil Authorities here decided we should cut the Strand which in effect with several the cables because large Timbers and parts of Barns and Etc were being Tangled Up in them and making a dam even though had they had excavated we our cable in fact was holding back quite a bit of water so we lost the cables at that time and the water was still raising at that time we uh ordered make checks and got cable coming we had people on the way to go up North and they stopped here and now restoring this cable loss that we have here basically what we've done we strung by with new cables across the bridge uh we've got a 24 15 a 9 a six and a four the four was a pick cable so we snapped it right back together heavy gauge pick and that put a lot of rural people back in business in just a couple hours we've got all the essential service in we now are after the bulk of this we are splicing on the east side of the bridge all the pairs with paramics and pushing all the count continuity to the west side of the bridge at the west side of the bridge we're tagging from the field from very locations this is a slow process we've got 5600 pair to tag spread over a large residential industrial commercial area in Blackfoot uh if you remember the uh new Motel they built there and the new shoting center and that sort of thing yeah that area is under about 3 ft of water still this morning it's starting to drain out uh we're out of service in the west part of Blackfoot in the rural area area and that's due to wet cables which we'll have to take care of as the area drains out it is not [Music] yet over 200 tons of equipment here marked by Western Electric for the Rexburg area was shipped to Idaho Falls [Music] [Applause] [Music] a [Applause] [Music] slowly at first phone service was reconnected the central offices today are back in service generally uh with full service to most customers we still have some trunks that are not turned up but generally we're giving them adequate service for the number of stations that are back on the line in those two offices there will be maintenance problems over the next few weeks but we'll work those out naturally you have to expect that after having offices underwater and the mud that comes in with that water during those floods at Rexburg we've restored about 900 stations as of last night we're busily contacting the businesses there in Rexburg and uh we have a quite a large number of the businesses back in service before the week's out we should have uh all of those that want service pretty well restored you know it's been very gratifying every occasion that I've been involved in where we've had a a catastrophe such as this the Bell System with the telephone people and that Spirit of dedicated service comes forth certainly this is a great demonstration of one company one Bell System all United to restore what my estimation is the worst disaster that's ever happened in the state of Idaho I've been in touch with the governor and several of the leading senators and congressmen and they have been most appreciative of the job that we're doing and have encouraged us to go ahead and do whatever we can to restore service to these people I can't help but be impressed with the Idaho organization and the job that they're doing we have not had a single person that hasn't responded to any need we've had volunteers from every part of the state perfectly willing to come over here and spend as much time as necessary to get this restored our Western Electric friends in Salt Lake have volunteered to help us anytime we've asked for additional equipment we've had it the Bell Labs have called with expertise on how to restore some of these offices it's just been a grand experience and makes me proud of being a member of the Bell [Music] System [Applause] [Music]