One Saturday Morning (1976)

[Music] [Music] come sat morning I'm going with my till the end of the dayr [Music] we're investigating leaks of 2 cubic feet per second near the junction of the downstream slope of the embankment from the right of butman if it worsens We'll advise you over [Music] all right the world is a circle uh Don Ellis has just called me on the mobile unit and he says it apparently is uh going to be quite a serious problem so you people on the North Fork and the South Fork of the Teton Rivers inflate your WPS I don't think she's going to hold for these rocks she to be wiening enlargement of the fingertips all right I'm going to interrupt right here and put Don Ellis in the krx K mobile unit on all right thank you very much Le we do have a very very ser here to H this is 056 abandon attempt to retrieve Cat 2 repeat abandon attempt and Evacuate the area [Music] immediately as I sit here and watch I you see it caving it's just coming apart at 11:57 a.m. on June 5 1976 the Teton Dam collapsed flooding homes and farms in the upper Snake River Valley with 80 billion gallons of water here are Recollections of how the people faced that disaster and rebuilt their lives and the water inal holy great what can I say people down stream better get out people Downstream better get out young fellow pulled me off and said the ton Dam had broke and I thought he was just kind of joking so I laughed about it went on about the Florest and bought a tree and took it up and planted it and then some of my neighbors said that we ought to turn on the radio because it really had happened and then when took keep on damage broke we had about an hour to to clear town I told him it was a bunch of baloney report from an aircraft in the vicinity of Sugar City the wall of water is approximately 5 to six miles wide and is moving buildings and everything out of its way cattle and the front that don't have a chance and uh suggest that all the people that are anywhere near the river at all that get out of the way though the warnings came late and it was difficult to convince many people the dam indeed had burst the timing of the flood in the middle of the day prevented Mass deaths and most residents were evacuated to Higher Ground where they watched the ear occurrence of houses and belongings floating [Music] away well it was gushing and it was so high it was coming in I would say probably 5 to 8 ft high and it was uh it was traveling fast and in head of it was just gusts of dirt billowing up high as it was pushing this land the soil in head of it and it was traveling I'll tell you and there was cattle that was swimming there was trailer houses floating there was homes brick homes floating we watched it from up the B we got up on the roof of our house to see what was happening and we could see the water coming from Sugar City this direction it had a big dust in front of it and you just couldn't believe the uh speed of the water coming seemed like the water would be around those houses about 30 seconds before the house would start and and the Widow lady lived a little below me up there and we stood there and watched her house and it just it was like somebody was driving it they just raised up off the foundation and come out onto the street made a right hand turn went to part of a block down the street then kind of made a 45° angle left hand turn and went across the park and landed about a block and a half away from where it some 220,000 acre feet of water roared through the huge gouge of the Teton Dam that Unforgettable Saturday morning the water spread its destruction as fast as a mile a minute in the areas of Wilford and Sugar City as it cut a swath of Destruction 7 miles wide the water's level reached from 8 to 10 ft in height the results over a billion dollar worth of damage destruction to 4,000 homes wiping out 250 businesses and 3500 farm buildings 11 human deaths the killing of 13,000 head of livestock and stripping top soil from 100,000 acres of Rich Farmland as the helpless idahoans watched their homes businesses and animals destroyed Before Their Eyes their reactions varied it came in from the northeast corner my home is two blocks in from the area right over here across the street this lovely brick home it used to be we watched it come in first reaction was it's taking our business first we have the drive-in theater out here and it swept our drive-in theater back washed us out completely and less than a minute and a half got her home you could see the cattle trying to get away from it we watched one bunch of cattle that uh had run away from the water and and turned right around and and run right back into it [Music] with roads crumbled telephone and power service to the area knocked out and debris spread everywhere the daed residents of six towns slowly mov back to survey the damage [Music] and but no stretch of the imagination could the flood confront us with the kinds of things we were seeing as We Came Upon the town there were several major fires burning hundreds of buildings were were completely demolished huge logs weighing up to five 10 tons moved at oh 12 15 M hour so that when they hit a building simply exploded the [Music] building well the whole town is more or less devastated and the uh Sugar City wford area they're just as bad if you were alone in the clean it' be a little bit tough to to face up to but uh have a lot of good neighbors there the whole The Whole Town's in the same boat so there's really not much any one of them can say I me just dig in and dig [Music] out though stun the people below the Teton Dam Area weren't down and out not not yet as the flood waters began to recede and they started to assess the massive damage relief efforts were already underway the Idaho State Police acting under the governor's office moved in to control traffic in and out of Roads not destroyed by the flood the LDS church and the Red Cross set up relief headquarters on the Rick's college campus in Rexburg local LDS Wards had already assessed conditions of people within their boundaries and residents with damaged or destroyed homes headed for Rick's College to await food clothing and beds the church and Red Cross were rushing food and supplies into the stricken area even before the end of the day simultaneously vital Services had to be restored railroad lines had to be repaired as well as electric power and phone service that had been destroyed as the first relief efforts began the power company was assembling the largest Armada of service Crews ever what amounted to mobilization of half of the company service Crews they began rolling into the flood devastated area shortly after dawn of the next [Music] day now we were in Rexburg with I remember 47 L crew shortly after Dawn we had at least uh 400 men working as the mayor later told me it seemed there was a li crew in every corner you remember know how much it meant to those people as they were coming back for their first view of their flooded homes [Music] massive flood debris at the power company's Rexburg service center was the major obstacle to restoring electric power that had to be overcome first our service center was full of logs debris dead cattle and a huge oil tank that had been carried down by the flooding burning approximately 40 yards from the building the yard had Timber and debris at least 10 to 12 ft deep and stretched across our property and into the railroad tracks over into the Sawmill area substation itself was jammed with hundreds of heavy Timber logs and dead cattle rammed into the Transformers and oil switches and the fence was completely obliterated Bashon and his folks moved in and began pulling logs and debris out and restoring the fence drying the relays amazingly enough at the end of the day the Transformer was energized and it held many local crew supervisors and members worked Around the Clock during the first first few days to restore vital power service even though taking no time at all to return to their own flooded and destroyed Homes Power service was reestablished to 3,000 customers and hookups established for an additional 1,54 residents whose homes were destroyed this took place as Crews feverously put in 1,000 poles and 200 Mi of conductor wire during 14 exhaustive days of relief efforts more than 70,000 manh hours were worked before the powery had restored 90% of the service to the [Music] [Music] Valley from the LDS church relief headquarters at Rick's College the Plucky local residents headed out each day to begin the slow painstaking task of digging out of all the rebel [Music] [Music] the mud wasn't a normal kind of mud it was a greasy mud it almost felt like it had graphite in it it permeated everything even behind the plaster walls and the plumbing and all our wiring Ducks it permeated the clothing and the storage foods and every sort of thing that it covered in the homes [Music] the Idaho National Guard and State Police continued their ever Vigilant job of monitoring traffic in and out of the areas as Crews work to repair major road damage and other communication and transportation facilities mopping up began around the Teton Dam as Federal scientists engineers and Bureau of Reclamation officials puzzled over the collapse of the 305 ft High 3200t wide structure which had been completed only 8 months earlier the Dam's Reservoir was still being filled on the morning of June 5th when the dam failed this region the Snake River plain was first settled by Mormon pioneers in the 1870s those first settlers found a harsh land with cold Winters and Searing Summers but the soil was fertile Mountain loone which when irrigated could produce Bountiful crops so an agricultural economy grew up which depended on vital irrigation water Farmers formed irrigation districts to build canals and dig Wells to water their crops even in the 1930s Farmers talked about the possibility of damning the Teton River to store irrigation water it wasn't until 1961 after years of studies by government agencies that plans for a major Dam on the Teton were announced when bids were first taken on the dam in 1971 lawsuits by environmentalists and other groups dragged the initial planning on and on construction began in 1972 on the controversial project but concerns over its geological structure led to the most complex grouting program the Bureau of Reclamation engaged in for any Dam in their history involving more than 575,000 [Music] the scars of the catastrophe will remain for a long time but for idahoans the cleanup was foremost in their minds and help poured in from even wider areas LDS church member volunteers from Utah and Idaho gave more than a million man hours to help the stricken area in cleanup projects slowly and surely the debris and Devastation was sorted out to be sure it didn't alter the fact that many fam had their homes completely destroyed and would have to Begin Again from [Music] scratch rebuild this would be a long hard process but as the tremendous efforts of restoring the residents to their homes the Reconstruction of Roads the rest restoration of power the town of Rexburg started to look again like a real City the people could reflect on how their lives had been completely changed by that one devastating event Recollections of disaster but a realization that man must work hard and give his best efforts for the service to others we are reminded that all men are fallible that no matter what we conquer Nature's strength and magnitude we can always fail but even so man will always have the will to survive to build to master I'm going with my SAT till the end of the day [Music] tell and but we will [Music] remember some of them have indicated that they may leave but I think that you'll find that most of these people will rebuild over a short period of time and the Rexburg will again be a delight place to live the best thing that comes out of it is the closeness of people in the community people that really weren't all that friendly before and really maybe on different social levels are now working together now for me the impact of the Teton Dam disaster will never end nor do I want it to ever end the magnificence of those people caught up in that flood particularly the greatness of the power company people who were hit by it I felt like I was walking among Tall Timber of course we're going to rebuild but while we're rebuilding the houses and the roads and all that has been destroyed partially or totally we're going to rebuild our own lives too a [Music]