Charles I. Frost Life during the Teton Flood. Box 6 Folder 14

Transcription

1 The Teton Dam Disaster Collection Charles I. Frost Life during the Teton Flood By Charles I. Frost June 27, 1977 Box 6 Folder 14 Oral Interview conducted by Mary Ann Beck Transcript copied by Sarah McCorristin June 2005 Brigham Young University Idaho

2 MB: Mr. Frost, where were you born? CF: I was born in San Francisco, California. MB: How long have you lived in Rexburg? CF: We moved here in August, MB: How old are you? CF: I was born on July 6, 1940, which means my 37 th birthday is coming up in two weeks. MB: Do you have a family? CF: I m married and have six children, five girls and one boy. MB: How many were living in your home at the time of the flood? CF: All of my family was there in addition to my wife s brother who was visiting us from BYU. MB: What was your address at the time of the flood? CF: 486 East 1 st North, Rexburg, Idaho. MB: What is your present address? CF: The same. MB: What do you do for a living? CF: I m the director of the physical plant at the college. MB: What college? CF: Ricks College. MB: How long have you lived in this area? CF: We moved to Rexburg in 1971 so we ve been here just about six years. MB: Did you own your own home? CF: Yes.

3 MB: And farm? CF: We don t have a farm. We just live in the city. MB: Did you support or oppose the construction of the Teton Dam? CF: I felt that the Teton Dam was a good project. MB: Why? CF: We need to have the irrigation water for use in the valley. MB: Did you or any member or your family have a premonition of the Teton disaster? CF: My daughter had a feeling that something terrible was going to happen the month previous to that but we paid no special attention to it. MB: Where were you and your family when the Teton Dam broke? CF: The first time I heard about the bursting of the Teton Dam was at 12:00 noon. I heard it from an employee at Ricks College who passed me on the street. Then I turned on the radio and went home and my family and I listened to the reports on the radio. MB: What was your first reaction when you heard that the dam had failed? CF: I calculated in my own mind about how deep the water would be, trying to estimate if our house would be flooded. My first estimate was four to five feet of water and that our home would probably be safe. MB: Did you try to save any household or personal items? CF: Yes. In fact, we felt that there might be water in our basement and even though we re on a slight hill just to the north side of town, we took a lot of our food storage items which would be ruined by water and moved them upstairs, hundreds of pounds of food. MB: Did you see the flood coming? CF: Yes I did. I saw it from my front porch. MB: Would you describe it in detail? CF: It looked a great deal like a large rolling breaker that you see at the ocean. There was a white foamy front and there was a cloud of dust that was pushed along by the water. As it came rolling over the land it was faster than a cow could run but a horse could outrun it. We saw horses running in front of the water jumping over the fences and

4 cows that were engulfed in the water as it came and would turn them end over end. We saw it hit houses and haystacks and cars and just blow them away literally. The logs and debris that were in there made just a big muddy foam-type tidal that came in. It looked to be six to eight feet high by the time it hit across the street from our house. MB: When you heard that the Teton Dam had failed what preparation to save your property or business did you undertake to do? CF: The only thing we did was try to move the stuff up out of the basement which we thought would be flooded and then we evacuated our home and took the kids and went up on the hill. As soon as we saw that our home was not going to be destroyed, then we went back to our home and watched the floodwaters go through town. Our home was one hundred feet from the north edge of the flood. MB: Did you have any unusual or miraculous experiences connected with the flood? CF: No, just a tremendous amount of hard work. MB: Did you see animals trying to escape the floodwaters? CF: Yes, many animals. As I mentioned a minute ago, we saw horses outrunning the water; we saw cows engulfed in the water. There were pigs and chickens and ducks that came up on our front lawn that swam to the edge of the floodwater. There were a lot of cows that were washed to the very edge of the floodwaters that were drowned just across the street from our house. It was something to watch the animals trying to escape. They d run into the fences and couldn t get through the fences and then the water would hit them and drown them. MB: Where did you and your family stay during the first two or three days after the flood? CF: We stayed in our home. We were very fortunate. The first twenty-four hours we didn t have any power and then we didn t have any water for about a week. Our telephones were reinstalled about ten days after the flood. We never had to leave our home. MB: Your home didn t even get flooded then? CF: Didn t get any water at all. We were one hundred feet away. MB: How soon after the flood were people able to return like your neighbors to their home? CF: Our neighbors across the street didn t have any homes. Their homes were lost. Our neighbor Neva Newton, her home was about two hundred feet from ours washed down

5 through Smith Park and ended up close to downtown so they didn t have any homes. The people right around us weren t flooded, our next-door neighbors. MB: When you came off the hill that night, what was your first reaction when you viewed the destruction of the city? CF: I didn t see much that night because I worked in the Civil Defense Command Post until after midnight but the next morning was a remarkable scene. I went with the police through downtown Rexburg at 5:00 a.m. The water had just receded enough so that you could drive through downtown and it looked like a scene that you d see in a battle. There were dead cows and logs and debris and fences and everything all over the streets and thick deep mud. There were cars and buses and trucks upside down and inside the store fronts and buildings smashed. There was not a sound to be heard when we drove through the street in the police car. This was about 5:00 a.m. in the morning. The sun was just coming up. It was a very strange feeling, everything was destroyed. MB: What were the smells? CF: The first couple of days it was mostly wet and soggy. And then after that it started to stink as the dead animals were brought in. We live right on the edge of the flood; we had a lot of dead animals that were washed right into our neighborhood. As the cows would begin to bloat they would stink and that was the typical smell of any dead and decaying animal. MB: Do you think there were any diseases caused by the flood? CF: We never determined any diseases. There was a scare that for a while the water would be contaminated, but as far as we could tell there was no contamination. Our family got tired of drinking chlorinated drinking water. We took city water and put in Clorox to purify the water and we drank that for ten days or a week until the water was restored. MB: What did you think about and how did you feel as you watched the floodwaters rolling through the area? CF: As soon as we heard the flood was coming I did what I could at the college and what I could at home and then we just waited. We knew it was coming and there was no earthly thing that you could do. You just had to wait while the waters came; it was mostly looking in stunned silence. All you could hear was kind of a rushing like a large stream and the snap of trees as they broke off and the crunch and the squealing of nails being pulled loose from houses that were being torn apart as they went past right in front of where we were standing. The occasional bellow of an animal as they were trapped in the floodwaters. All we could think of was, There s gonna be a lot of people killed and there s gonna be a lot of death and there isn t anything that we can do about it.

6 MB: What were some of the problems with which you were confronted, problems that gave you the most frustration in the role at the college? CF: Well, as the director of physical plant, my job is to organize and operate and maintain the facilities at the college. All of a sudden we had thousands of people that we had to house on the college campus and more than half of our regular staff members were themselves flooded out. And so we had a fantastic job trying to keep the buildings open, trying to provide the usual services on the campus with more than half of our people not even able to come to work and yet thousands of people here. The worst problems I think, were trying to keep the flood operation open at the Manwaring Center and we concentrated much of our effort there. We turned buildings into relief centers, and the helicopter pad was on campus. All of these activities were coordinated and organized partly through the physical plant. MB: Have you had any unusual or uplifting experiences during the cleanup operation? CF: No. I really wasn t involved in the cleanup operation. I spent most of my time right here on campus directing the affairs here. MB: Do you think Rexburg suffered any vandalism or any form of lawlessness? CF: Yes, there was some. One of the stories that I personally know to be true concerns Grover Jewelry Company. The jewelry company was vandalized on Sunday night after the windows were all broken. The next day, Monday, as they went down to begin slopping out the mud that was left at the store the owner hired some kids to help him. He noticed while they were cleaning it they were putting a lot of things in their pockets and so he called the police. These kids were looting his store while they were cleaning it. The police went to their home and they found that these were the same kids which had looted the store the night before. So there was some of that. These young people were young men and they were convicted and sentenced. There were other cases of people stealing things that were left out on the lawns. By and large though I think most of the looting was held to a minimum. MB: What kind of government aid first came immediately into Rexburg? CF: The first thing that happened was that the church was organized and we began feeding people through the Manwaring Center. Then in rapid succession the Red Cross was here and set up their aid station and the Federal Disaster Agency from HUD was here and they were all operating within two or three days after the flood. MB: How many LDS volunteer groups came in after the flood? CF: I don t know. MB: Thousands?

7 CF: Thousands, I guess, but I don t know how many people. MB: Do you know how many Mennonites came in? CF: No, I don t have any of those figures. MB: Did you receive any assistance from the Red Cross? CF: Yes, the Red Cross was here and performed a tremendous service right from the beginning. My family was fortunate and needed no help. MB: How long were they here? CF: I don t know. They were here for at least several months. MB: Do you feel that any who assisted in recovery operations took advantage of the people of Rexburg or the government, especially in getting a lot of money without really earning it? CF: There were some contractors that did that. MB: Would you like to go into detail? CF: Well, they gave people bids on their homes and then declared bankruptcy and left the area and the people weren t able to get their homes completed. And there were a lot of people that made a lot of money in a hurry by charging national scale rates for equipment and labor whereas the local labor rates were far under that. For example, our labor rates for just common everyday labor was $3.00 to $4.00 an hour and so I think in a sense the government spent a lot more money for cleanup than they needed to. I m sure that there were some who took advantage of the flood but by and large most of the things were done honestly. MB: Without divulging any names, do you know of anyone who filed fraudulent flood claims? CF: I have no way of knowing that. MB: Do you feel that the flood was divine punishment, a natural disaster or a man-made disaster? CF: It was a man-made disaster. It was a failure in the way the dam was designed and I m convinced that a safe dam could be built in that site using better methods and it could have been avoided. MB: Do you feel that the dam should be rebuilt then?

8 CF: Yes, we need to have the irrigation water and if we don t have a flood control dam on the Teton River, some day we ll be flooded out again when there s a lot of snow in the mountains. I don t know if it should be rebuilt in the same place that s up to the engineers that design the dam, but we do need flood control and irrigation water in the Teton River. MB: How has the Teton disaster changed the flood zone? CF: It s been a tremendous change in the flood zone. There were a lot of older homes and older structures that were wiped away and as you drive through Rexburg and Sugar City and out towards Wilford, it s all brand new. And it ll be a number of years before some areas are in full production. Other parts of land I m sure were improved. If they were heavy clay soils and they washed a lot of sand in they re actually better soils then they used to be. Some of the land will never be reclaimed. As far as me personally, the Teton Dam disaster was an experience that I lived through and one that I ll always remember but hasn t necessarily made any big changes in me. MB: Do you think Rexburg was prepared for a flood? CF: I think the people of Rexburg since they are highly religious and there s such a high proportion of Mormons were probably better prepared to answer a call of warning. When the time came to leave their homes and to flee everybody knew their neighbors, they were concerned about their neighbors and they warned their neighbors and then everybody listened to that warning and left. I think that s the main reason that there was such a low loss in life. In some areas people wouldn t believe a warning like that. In fact, in the Big Thompson flood over in Colorado just three months after the one at Rexburg, there were campers and people who were in the river bottom who refused to leave even after the sheriff s office and others warned them that there was a flood coming and as a result there were over a hundred people killed in that flood. In Rexburg if people had reacted the same way there would have been thousands killed and yet as soon as everybody heard it was time to leave, they left. I think that s due to their being concerned about each other and they believe each other and when the warning came they knew what they should do. Now as far as being prepared for that kind of a shock, no. The people of Rexburg weren t any better prepared than anybody else except that their religious faith I feel allowed them to stand up under the loss of all their homes and loved ones and possessions. MB: How long was the Bishop s storehouse open? CF: The bishop s storehouse started operating in the college building within a day or two after the flood. We started to dispense food and clothing and other items immediately. Most of the flood was dispensed from the Manwaring Center. Clothing items were dispensed from several locations but eventually they were all centralized in the physical plant area where we had a clothing outlet. People could get their temple garments, they could come and get shoes and other items of clothing there. The church welfare department set up in our motor pool building for distribution of all kinds of household

9 items, sheets and pillowcases and bedding and mattresses and the things that people would need to start putting their lives back in order. We had the morgue set up over in the Industrial Science Building and we only used it three, four times. There weren t very many people that were killed. And as soon as the morgue moved out, we moved food storage into the same space. That food storage was in there all summer long and was finally moved out to the bishop s storehouse in Ucon the last part of August just before school started. The garment distribution center was kept in the physical plant clear until later in the fall when it was moved out. I m not sure whether that was in September or October but it was sometime in the fall when it was moved out. A person could come and get the items that they needed without regards for a recommend as far as food and items of clothing. They did begin requiring recommends for a person to get a new set of garments so that they were sure they were issuing garments to church members. MB: When did the BOR come on campus? CF: The Bureau of Reclamation moved into the old gym in July of 1977 and they were there until May, excuse me, they moved into the old gym in July of 1976 and they were there until May of We originally had planned to tear the building down during the fall and winter of but because the BOR needed the space we kept the building in service for them. By the end of the school year their claims were starting to diminish and they had other office space in town so they moved out on the first of May. MB: Was it a good learning experience? CF: I think it was but it s one I hope that we never have to repeat anywhere. MB: Do you think it was a good missionary tool? CF: From my personal experience I don t know whether people were converted or not because of their association with the members here. However, I have heard that many government officials and people who worked for the government that came into the flood were impressed by the religious faith of the Mormons here and their basic honesty. I have heard that several people did join the church because of their association with members here in Rexburg. MB: Thank you, Mr. Frost

10 The following is a recollection of the experiences which I, Charles Frost, had during the flood which occurred in Rexburg June 5, Most of these experiences have to do with the events at the College and the role that Ricks played in providing food and shelter for refugees affected by the flood. Strangely enough, my first warning of the flood came from a Ricks College employee. I was downtown purchasing some chemicals to kill dandelions in my lawn when Marlin Muir came past and said that the flood was coming. The Teton Dam had broken and that we had better get to high ground in a hurry. I immediately turned on the radio and heard the news and hurried home, arriving there about twelve noon. As soon as I got home, Brent Hall called me on the telephone to ask what the College should be doing. He suggested that we put out over the radio that Ricks College would serve as a place of refuge. I agreed this was an excellent suggestion. I tried to call President Eyring, but he wasn t home. I tried to call Brother Bennion and he wasn t home either. I decided to go ahead and call the sheriff s office anyway and have them announce over the radio that Ricks would be a place of refuge on the hill. By five minutes after twelve, the sheriff s office had contacted the radio station and the news was out that people should go to the College hill as a place of refuge from the flood. By quarter after twelve, I had come up to the College and talked to Gary Olsen in the Manwaring Center. Clark Whitehead was also there and things were beginning to come alive. There were cars and people scrambling around campus and the refugees were already beginning to assemble on the college hill. Clark, Gary and I worked for a few minutes trying to get some of the buildings open and make arrangements for the people on the campus. By one Saturday afternoon, I was starting to get worried about my own family and so went back home to see what needed to be done there. My wife and her brother (who was staying with us that weekend) had already started to bring the food storage out of the basement and carry it upstairs. We were listening to the radio and I made a quick calculation about the water depth. I felt that the water would only be three to four feet deep by the time it hit Rexburg and that we would be alright at our house, which is located on First North. By two p.m. the water had hit Sugar City and the radio said it was coming through ten to twelve feet high. The news frightened our family and we decided we should evacuate our home. We put the children in the car, grabbed some food and water and drove further up on the hill to watch the flood come into town. As the flood hit the town, it was a lot like a large breaker that comes in on the ocean. There was a huge cloud of dust that moved in front of the flood waters, apparently pushed there by the on-rush of the waters. As the water came it had a white foamy front and you could see it engulf cars, haystacks, fences, trees. Houses were shoved off foundations as the water smashed into them. The wave appeared to be moving about six to eight miles per hour. The water moved faster than a cow could run. Horses could outrun it and we saw several horses that would run right through fences or jump over them, staying ahead of the water as it came towards Rexburg. The cows and

11 the pigs and other livestock weren t as fortunate and you could see them caught in the waves as it came in. Our home was lucky. We were spared any direct effects of the flood as the highwater mark occurred one hundred feet from the edge of our property. We watched the water come into the north edge of town and saw many of the homes in the block just west of the high school be destroyed. Neva Newton s home flooded up off the foundation and went down First North Street through the park and ended up on Main Street by Dr. Peterson s office. The noise was incredible. The sound was like a large rushing river as the waters came through. There were squeaks and squeals from the homes as nails pulled loose, rushing sounds from the waters themselves and debris cracking, breaking, popping off against any solid objects. Mixed in were sounds of animals as they were swimming through the flood waters and explosions in the background when gasoline tanks and other kinds of flammable materials caught on fire. There was not a sound in town. There were no horns people just stood by silently as they watched floodwaters go through town. The wave from the flood seemed to come quickly and the waters rose within a matter of a few minutes to their full six to eight feet depth. By about three-thirty p.m. the water had begun to recede and had dropped a foot or more around the areas that I could see from my house. About three thirty I went back up to the College to meet with Brother Bennion, Mack Shirley and Sander Larsen to talk about housing refugees in the College dormitories. Plans were immediately made to open up the dormitories. Members of the staff were drafted to work in the Manwaring Center to begin getting people into College housing. This was a very trying period for the College. As events turned out later, over half of the Physical Plant employees were flooded out and for the two weeks of the maximum crisis, we had less than half of our normal employees. It was interesting that there were only two supervisors available to operate the Physical Plant during those first ten days. That was Brent Hall, the Assistant Custodial Supervisor and myself. The other supervisors were either flooded or the roads were out so they were not able to come to work. The majority of the campus was open for business as usual during the crisis. Local businesses were moved into the Classroom Office Building, the disaster agencies were housed in the Hart Building, the Kirkham Building had clothing supplies, and the Clarke Building had a day nursery. We opened up the showers in the Hart for people to clean up themselves. We had a major problem on our hands to keep the College operating with about forty percent of our regular employees available. Those who were here worked practically around the clock and provided an enormous service to the community to keep the College buildings open and running. Summer school was only delayed one week due to the flood. Classes resumed on June 14.

12 By Saturday night, Brother Bennion and myself, were taking turns representing the College in the Civil Defense Disaster Headquarters which was in the Army Reserve Building at Fourth South and Second East. The headquarters closed up about midnight and we began to work again at five a.m. on Sunday morning. I ll never forget the first look I had of Main Street on Sunday morning, June 6. I went down the street with Jim Sessions from our College Police and it looked like the pictures you see of a battlefield. There were cars upside down strewn all along the street, cars inside of stores, windows blasted out inside the stores, everywhere there were debris, dead animals, trees and even a bus that had floated down the street and ended up against the Food Center Building. Mud was thick everywhere and there was absolutely not a sound at five in the morning. We had to pick our way down through the street to be sure we didn t drive over barbedwire fences, tree stumps and dead animals that were on the Main Street of town. By Sunday night, things were starting to pretty well to take shape as far as the College was concerned. We were able to locate the disaster relief agencies in the Hart Building and get them established. The Food Services operation was beginning to function smoothly to feed the thousands of refugees. There were supplies beginning to pour into the town and we were busily looking for warehousing space in campus buildings to receive all the materials. Over the next couple of weeks we established the Bishop s Storehouse in the Motor Pool area in the Physical Plant. The Garment Distribution Center was established in a storage building next to the Motor Pool Building. We had Clorox and drinking water supplies underneath the carport in the Physical Plant compound as well as clothing stored there. Extra food supplies were eventually established in an automotive lab in the Industrial Sciences Building. An enormous amount of clothing was sorted and displayed in the Kirkham Ballroom and local businesses were temporarily given offices in the Classroom Office Building. At one point, we even established a temporary morgue in the Industrial Science Building in the Automotive Lab. Fortunately, this morgue was only used four to five times during the course of the flood as there was a very low loss of life. I believe the peak, as far as the College was concerned, occurred on the Thursday after the flood. This was the day that thirty thousand meals were served in the Manwaring Center. At this point, people were busily engaged in mucking mud out of their homes and we had a major health problem trying to keep the mud out of the Manwaring Center when people came to eat. At one point, the mud was nearly a quarter of an inch deep on the floors of the hallways and eating area in the Manwaring Center. We were able to establish cleaning crews by hiring students and taking other members of the Physical Plant staff over into the Manwaring Center to help keep it clean and thus get the dirt out between each meal. The Food Services people felt that the kitchen should close down between meals in order to give us a chance to keep it clean. Painters, carpenters and students were pressed into service in Manwaring Center to help serve the food and keep the building clean. As far as I know, we had no major outbreak of health problems and we were able

13 to keep the mud and dirt out of the building while the people were trying to come in to have their dinner. Physical Plant had a couple of unusual experiences one occurred of special note: one day, this was the Wednesday after the flood, one of our Physical Plant employees happened to see what looked like our Roto-rooter in the back of a truck that was parked at the Manwaring Center. No one had asked to use it and he wasn t sure if the Rotorooter was Physical Plant s, but just on impulse he wrote the license number down of the truck. The next day was the Thursday when we served the thirty thousand meals and the sewer plugged off in the Manwaring Center. We had an emergency condition with the Manwaring Center. Then the sewer plugged off in Building #36 dormitory on Friday and the sewer also plugged at the Heating Plant on that Friday and we didn t have a Rotorooter. We put a frantic call into Idaho Falls, the telephones were working by then, and the Roto-rooter service came up from Idaho Falls and did all three buildings and got us out of our problem. The next week we were looking for our Roto-rooter and our plant employee happened to remember he had written the license number down. Ray Price was able to come to work by the following Wednesday (the road had been repaired enough that he could come into town) so he took the license number and went downtown to the County Sheriff s office to try to locate who had the Roto-rooter from the College. Amazingly enough, their records were intact and they discovered that the pickup belonged to a Ricks College employee. Ray Price went out to this man s home and asked him for the Rotorooter. The man said he had borrowed it because his sewer had backed up, even though he wasn t involved in the flood. Ray asked him why he hadn t asked permission to take it and then kept it for a week. The man replied he kept it just in case he might have needed it again. This flabbergasted everyone in Physical Plant because we had thousands of people on campus and this man had the Physical Plant Roto-rooter without permission and had kept it for a week during the peak of the flood crisis. We had other instances of people that borrowed equipment and used it and finally after several days it had turned up. We lost one of our large vans during the hectic hours after the flood and it took the State Police and an all points bulletin to find the truck. It was down in Idaho Falls and had been driven several hundred miles. Physical Plant called upon the people down at BYU to help during the cleanup and several people volunteered to come up. Those who were here operating equipment from BYU and Ricks College include the following: Paul Jackson, BYU; Ross Riskey, BYU; Tony Granado, BYU; Merling Stoddard, Ricks; Dyal Roberts, Ricks; Roy Rounds, Ricks; Gerald Johnson, Ricks; Vance Hendricks, Ricks; Ed Malstrom, Ricks; Lyle Lowder, Ricks; Bob Hatton, Ricks; Neil Lish, Ricks; Bob Keele, Ricks. Also helping in the cleanup effort on the organizational end were Dave Allen, Bob Todd and Alan Clark. These brethren over a period of ten days removed 259 loads of debris from faculty and staff members homes. There was so much debris that this hardly made a dent in the amount but it made a big difference in the morale knowing that the College and the Church were there helping as much as they could, along with everyone else.

14 As far as the College was concerned, we had to cancel work on several of our projects in order to take care of the flood refugees. Work on the storage building at the Hart Building was postponed for thirty days because of the disaster relief agencies located in the field house. Work on the Center Street steam line was postponed for thirty days so that they wouldn t be blasting and excavating along that street when there were so many people on campus. Our campus grounds suffered during the flood period because of a lack of water. The city had some problems with their pumps so they requested the College not to irrigate. This meant that our flowers and lawns began to turn very brown. The days immediately after the flood were quite hot and we were afraid we might lose many of our lawns. The city people were prevailed upon and they allowed us to begin on a manual cycle and we were able to maintain the lawns on the Campus for two weeks by watering intermittently to keep them alive. After full water service was restored to the city, the Campus lawns and shrubs pulled out of it with very little permanent effect. The College buildings themselves suffered no real long-term effects from the flood. The major damage to the College was on the all-weather track located north of the PE Building. As the flood water swept through that end of the Campus, sections of the track were torn up and an estimated $80,000 damage to the track, fences and surroundings area was done. Two College buildings were flooded badly- Building 79, the Alumni House, and Building 80, where the Music Department had some organs, pianos, and pieces of furniture and furnaces ruined by the flood. The College had already sold the homes which were on Second South and Center Street and the people who bought these homes were responsible for them after the flood. Another interesting challenge we had was to move the refugees out of the College dormitories and clean them in order to receive the students for fall semester. The last of the refugees left about two weeks before the start of the new semester. BYU again helped us out and sent some carpenter crews up to help do the maintenance in the dormitories. Our Custodial Department worked overtime hours and were able to shampoo all the carpets and the furniture in the dormitories prior to the school year. When the students arrived, by and large, most of the dormitories and college buildings were cleaned and ready for the beginning of a new school year. I feel a special vote of thanks should be given to the crews from Physical Plant because of the extra efforts they performed during the summer. In spite of personal losses of an enormous magnitude, our Physical Plant employees were still able to get much of their work done on Campus. Exactly thirty days after the flood, on July 7, I made a survey of our Physical Plant employees. At that time, twenty-five out of eightythree employees did not have homes and were living either in trailer houses or temporary rented apartments or with relatives. Still the work in the Physical Plant was able to go on and the College was kept open for a number of refugees living here. Ricks was also able to complete summer school and move the Administration to new quarters.

15 As a personal note about the way my family was affected by the flood: we were without water for about a week, without power only twenty-four hours and our telephone was restored within ten days. As an interesting sidelight, we took a vacation to the Oregon Coast the latter part of the summer and my three year old daughter was afraid to go near the breakers as they came in from the ocean. She kept saying It s the flood, it s the flood. She remembered seeing the flood waters coming through Rexburg and the breakers at the ocean looked exactly to her as the flood did as it came through Rexburg.