TETON ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM TETON DAM DISASTER. Ronnie E. Moss. Interviewed by. David L. Crowder. August 3, 1977

Transcription

1 TETON ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM Ricks College Idaho State Historical Society History Department, Utah State University TETON DAM DISASTER Ronnie E. Moss Interviewed by David L. Crowder August 3, 1977 Project made possible by funds from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation Idaho State Legislature through the Idaho State Historical Society and National Endowment for the Humanities

2 UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY & RICKS COLLEGE HISTORY DEPARTMENTS COMMUNITY IMPROVEMENT THROUGH LOCAL HISTORY ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM INTERVIEWEE AGREEMENT You have been interviewed in connection with a joint oral history program of the History Department, Utah State University, Ricks College, and the Idaho State Historical Society. The pur- pose of this oral history program is to gather and preserve information for historical and scholarly use. A tape recording of your interview has been made by the interviewer. A verbatim typescript of the tape will be made and a final typed and edited transcripts, together with the tape will be made and a final will then be filed in the Milton R. Merrill Library Special Collections, David 0. McKay Library at Ricks College, and the Idaho State Historical Society in Boise.- This material will be made available according to each of the depositories' policies for research be scholars and by others for scholarly purposes. When the final transcript is completed, a personal copy will.be sent to you. * * * * * In view o he historical and scholarly value of this information, I,, do hereby assign full (please print full name) and all rights of this material to the Merrill Library at Utah State University, to the Library at Ricks College, and to the Idaho State Historical Society at Boise, Idaho, for scholarly purposes according to each of the institutions governing policies. Interviewee's Signature 3 /9'77 ate

3 UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY & RICKS COLLEGE HISTORY DEPARTMENTS COMMUNITY IMPROVEMENT THROUGH LOCAL HISTORY ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM INTERVIEWER AGREEMENT In view of the historical and scholarly value of this information contained in the interview with //20-SS, I9 Dfrod AL e.krit'cliff-- (name, please print) (interviewer, print) knowingly and voluntarily permit the Milton R. Merrill Library at Utah State University, the David 0. McKay Library at Ricks College, and the Idaho State Histor - ical Society at Boise, Idaho, the full rights and use of this information. (- m Interviewer's Signature Date

4 ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEWEE: Ronnie E. Moss INTERVIEWER: David L. Crowder DATE: August 3, 1977 C: Ronnie, would you please spell your name? M: My name is spelled, Ronnie E. Moss. C: Ron, June 5, 1976, was a momentous day in Snake River Valley history. Where O were you and your family when you heard about the dam breaking? M: When I first heard about the dam breaking, I'd come into town with two of my children to purchase some more carrot seed. I was in the process of planting and finishing my garden off that day, kind of late in the year. We O had just pulled in the Mighty Mite and I stepped out of the pickup and a fellow came running out of the store, knowing that I was civil defense director, real excited and told me that the Teton Dam had broken. C: Did you believe him? M: With the looks and expression on his face, yes. There was quite amazement and disbelief at the beginning, but I was sure that something had happened. C: What was your reaction? M: I don'e even know whether my children got out of the pickup or not. I just turned around and got back in the pickup. As I was getting in, a lot of things went through my mind, I was wondering where the commissioners might be, wondering where their operations chief might be and just how we were going to pull everybody together and start functioning. My first reaction--i'm an O amateur radio operator--i got on my radio, by this time that had been out of order, the radio itself, the regular broadcasting stations. I heard some fellows talking about it there. So I broke into them, knowing that both of them were flyers, because they had their own airplane, I asked them to meet me at the Rexburg airport so that we might fly over the area and see just

5 what had happened. From there I got ahold of the communications officer of the and told him the situation--he had not heard of this yet--and asked him to meet me at the courthouse. From this point, I turned around and went back to the Viking Motel, where my family was working, my oldest daughter and my wife. No matter what your responsibilities are, it seems like you always think of your family first. I told them what had happened and from that moment, I turned and went to the courthouse. I still had my two younger children with me. county, to go to the EOC. At this time it was located in the courthouse. C: What is the EOC? M: That's the Emergency Operating Center for the county. C: Who was the.. M: Gordon Black is communications officer. So I immediately went to his house C: Did you send your family home? M: No, I didn't send,them home at that time. I told them what had happened and they ought to go home and get things in order. I would let them know as things progressed on. My wife also happens to have a radio license and so she could monitor. At that time, we had some handy talkies and she kept one, so she could monitor and keep aware of what was happening. I found out later that they went ahead and finished their work and then they went home. C: Did you have any idea that your home would be jeopardized? M: We prepared it as though it would have been. They pulled all the sugar and stuff out of the basement and set it on the upper floor. It wasn't up high. They just pulled everything out of the basement,all of our food supplies, other than that that was in bottles, sugar, flour, and this type of thing, and anything of personal value, records and things that were in the basement were set on the main floor. C: Where did you live at that time? -2-

6 -3- M: I lived in Lyman. C: Is that your present address? M: That's my present address. C: Was your house hit by the waters? M: No, it was several miles from there. C: You went then, to the courthouse? M: I went then, to the courthouse and as I arrived to the courthouse, I really had a lot of concern in my mind: Where is our government officials? How am I going to get everybody together? My responsibility as the director of civil defense is to advise the elected officials in what should be done in these types of circumstances, along with the schooling that we've had in the past. I was really concerned how we're going to get everybody warned. We have a plan in the county for emergencies. We have had drills in the past, dry runs, as you might call them, but nothing that was actual, you know, how were the plans going to work? Well, as I arrived at the courthouse, I was walking in the back door--i would say more or less running--and as I arrived there I met the operations director, who is Kent Marler. We both got at the courthouse almost at the same instant. From that point, we went into the sheriff's office, and I believe that the time span was very small; I would say within minutes. The chairman of the county commissioners was there, Keith Walker, and within a few minutes later, the other two commissioners had arrived. As far as I know Del Klingler had arrived, and I'm not sure just exactly when Leo Smith arrived there. Before Commissioner Walker arrived, we asked the county sheriff to sound the alarm, which we have the responsibility for as civil defense--to make sure that the people are warned. That's our first responsibility, is to save lives. The little fellow at the control console really got excited and didn't know for sure what to do, so we instructed him to sound the siresns, which can be both--

7 -4- Sugar City and Rexburg can be--controlled from there. He reached over and hit the switch and turned it on and turned it off. That excited Kent Marler quite a bit and he said, "I want them on and running," being operations director, and we had talked these things out before. He reached over and turned it on and left it on for maybe two minutes this time, and kicked it off. I don't know exact sequence, but the young fellow at the console got the idea after that, that the sirens weren't turned off. In other words, Kent reached over, turned them on--i believe he officially turned thm on--and they ran contin- ually from thereafter, as far as I'm aware of, trying to get the people... something happened so that we could get everyone aware. Now with that thing running, people get quite curious. From that time I told Commissioner Walker what I'd done about an airplane so we could actually fly over the area and see what had happened. In the meantime, he had actually been at the dam and turned around and come back. All these things had happened. We went out to get somebody to take us to the airport and there was a person there from the Bonneville Jeep Patrol. We got in the vehicle and I've never made such good time between the courthouse and the airport in my life, because he sure put us out there in a hurry. When we got there, just pulling up to the hangar area, the airplane was landing. The fellows that I had talked to on the radio were from Idaho Falls, one being a commercial pilot, not commercial in the sense of airlines, but flying commercial charter flights, and an instructor. They landed at the airport just as we got to the runway. In other words, we walked out of the vehicle over to the runway and got into the airplane. Things were timed out just perfect, things were just coordinated so well. We got ourselves in the airplane and took off for the site, talking over many things. And all during this time we had never lost communications with the command post. We had direct communications with the operations director, with the other commiss- loners, and with the county police. At no time did we lose communications with

8 them. As we arrived where the water was, I would say it was about to the Wilford Church, just as we arrived, the water had come to the Wilford area. As I remember looking down, all I could see was part of the top of the roof, there was logs laying on top of that and the steeple. You could not see the rest of the church at all. It had just got there and it was that high, and it was quite a sickening feeling to really see that. As we looked around and seen what was happening, the width of it and everything, I called back to the command post and talked with Kent Marler, and said, "It's bad, move the people." And from that time the evacuation directly progressed. There had been some evacuation before that time, the state police were out working from house to house. We had people warning neighbors, neighbor warning neighbor. The siren was going and we also had the Bonneville Jeep Patrol out, getting people out. I found out later there were stake presidents, bishops, and everybody, but at that time I wasn't aware of it. C: How di.d the Bonneville Jeep patrol get involved? M: They showed up to help. Nobody really asked them to come in, its their responsibility in areas of any disaster, or people being lost or anything, to help, and they did not do a thing until such time as we directed them. I haye never worked with a finer group of people knowing how to work in this kind of condition, in emergency conditions. They took all their directions -5- O directly from us. They never did a thing on their own. They had a commander stationed at the OC and he directed his people upon what we requested. Very well organized people. C: As you flew over the advancing flood waters, did you get all the way up to the dam site? M: No, we never went clear to the dam. When we seen what had happened we knew our responsibilities. We'd better be back at the comand post directing the affairs. We wanted to see what we actually had, we needed that type of

9 -6- information. There was a lot of talk, you was listening on the radios and differ- ent things, but you need to assess some of those things sometimes yourself and take a look at it, I believe it helped us in many decisions that was made later. I know there was one thing that was quite strange, I seen quite a large barn, it was a two story type barn, the water hit that and it just almost looked like it exploded from the inside, then it was gone. You couldn't see debris. You couldn't see anything. At the time I wondered why and later I found out with all the debris and mud and stuff coming down with that, that that was the reason. But at the time you didn't realize those things, As we was flying back, I seen a horse that was running kind of at a zig zag pattern, in front of it. If he'd have run straight, I think he could have out run it, but there was fences and things and just before the water got him, he turned around and jumped into it. I never seen the horse again. That's about all I can recall, other than it was quite strange for me at that time to see quite a large cloud of dust in front of it. That was quite prevalent. There was a large cloud of dust just directly in front of it. C: Even being in a position to see the waters going down the valley, did you anticipate that it would be as bad as it was going to be? M: As we talked, coming back in the plane, we figured that there would be several feet of water in Rexburg. We didn't know how much. I don't believe we realized the force that would be here. We probably realized the depth, but probably not the force of the water that was coming. Our evacuation, we started with the north end of the county and evacuated them either direction, which ever was quickest, to either go north or south. Then as we seen the traffic on the highway start to dwindle down, we started evacuating the north side of Rexburg to the south side of Main Street. I guess that was our first stopping point, south side of Main Street. Before we landed on the ground, I talked with Kent on the radio and I said, "We better take them at least to Second South." So we

10 moved everybody to Second South and that was while we was still in the air, before we'd came back from the Wilford area back to the airport back at Rexburg, all that had taken place. When we arrived at the airport there was some quite anxious moments, because there wasn't a way to get back to the courthouse, to get back with our transportation. But I would say it was a matter of three or four minutes that we had transportation. It seemed like forever standing there. As we came back into Rexburg, it was quite a strange sight. We come down the Main Street of Rexburg and in just that much time, from the time it took us to go up and back, people were out of the main street, and they were putting Visqueen around the front of their doors and sand bagging down Main Street, the people with their owners. Quite strange. I had the feeling myself I ought to stop and tell them that that probably isn't going to do much, good. But still they were helping themselves trying to get things straightened around, and they were busy. As we arrived back to the courthouse, there had been arrangements made to move our emergency operating center to the army reserve building. And this had all taken place in the matter of what it took us to fly up and back. We had discussed over the air that that wasn't the place for emergency operating center, that it just wouldn't work, that there would be water in those areas and that we should move to higher ground. So we moved then at that time. Still while we were in air, Keith Walker made these decisions, and worked with the operations director on the ground and the other commissioners, and all these decisions were made, and moved the emergency operating center to the hill. C: Was your authority under the commissioners? M: Yes. The commissioners make the decisions that affect the county. They are the government heads, they are the decision makers. My role as Civil Defense Director is to make them aware of all the possibilities and what the alterna- tives are and make suggestions to what I think should be done. They actually -7-

11 -8- make the decision of what will be done. That lies in the commissioners' hands. O C: After you moved your operation to the army reserve building, what kind of organization did you establish there? M: Before the water had ever even arrived at Rexburg, or in the Sugar City area, we had set down and talked over the many things that we had seen. Keith briefed them on what he had seen, the other commissioners and other O people that was at the staffing meeting at that time. We had some church leaders there. We had all the commissioners, myself, and the operations chief, we had the state police there, their man that was in charge, and we had the director of the Bonneville Jeep Patrol there. Also at this time, some military was starting to show up, some reservers and national guard had been activated, and they were starting to show up. So at that time the commis- sioner and myself briefed everybody--what we had seen, what we expected, and set up some guidelines of what we would do. I guess even in that meeting, our main concern was, that everybody, get warned, because we seen some people that was standing down on the roads looking back at the water and from our advantage point, we didn't see how they could ever get out of there. But they did some way. They was out there in their pickups, cars, looking on the county roads, looking towards where the water was coming from. And that was our main concern that those people get out, that all the farmers were notified, and how many people were fishing on the river? And I guess that's the kind of people that we talked about, We was wondering of we're going to have many dead, did we get everybody warned and did everybody find out in time? Then at that time, about all we could do was to watch. The state police was still out trying to get people in and also the Bonneville Jeep Patrol. About that time, all we could do was do a little bit of praying and hope that everybody was warned and still getting their information to the people.

12 -9- C: Were there any close calls? M: We heard of a lot of them from the state police, just as they warned people, just as they were coming down the road, the water was just behind them. Some of them even got water on their back tires. They came into the command post and was telling us. They was quite excited. But as far as us and our operation and our people, no. We were at the command post and we were directing the people that were in the field. C: How did you deal with the people, once the waters had gone through? They were now all up here on the hill? M: I don't know if it was dismay, or disbelief, or what, but we had no people problems, crowd control. State police were quite concerned with what we were going to do with all the people. That was a lot of people to look after. I didn't mention this, during this meeting that we were having, when we first initially got back, we were sitting there lis g to each other and Keith told me this afterwards, I suggested to him that we move to at least Third South, at that height all the way around. He mentioned to me afterwards that he had the same feeling, We did, We then put the state police out during that meeting time, and asked them to go down town, you know, they had communf- cation with their people, and move everybody back south of Third South. The water came between Second and Third South. That's as high as it came. We had our evacuation higher than the water, I would say, by several feet. That's pretty close. We both, sitting there in that meeting, we had the feeling that we should move further than Second South, so during that meeting, we did move them back. About crowd control: by the time the water had come in that area, we had people come in and set up places for the people to be fed. We'd contacted the Manwarfng Center, during this initial type thing, too, before the.- water ever come. It was one of the first things we'd done when we got back. We knew we were going to have people problems, we was going to have to feed

13 them, sleep them, and we had called the Manwaring Center and asked them, "What can you do for us?" They said, "We'll do everything we can." I think that's -10- about the only communications that we had at that moment. From that time, the Manwaring Center--Brother Rex Bennion probably got involved in it, I wasn't involved with that stage--anyway, all we did was ask for help and they took over and did it. We never worried about feeding. We did that first, initial day. We worried about what was going to happen, where we were going to get the food, but as things progressed, we didn't have to worry about that. They organized themselves, and they took care, and they come and met with us in our meetings, so that they'd have a feel for what was going on at the command post, Then they'd report back to us what they could do, But they completely organized themselves. We didn't have to go down and organize that, as civil defense director or commissioners. Those people organized themselves. C: As the military began coming in, where did they fit into the organizational structure? M: The military can only be called up through an emergency and the only person that can declare emergency on the county level is the commission, then the governor on the state level, and the president on a national level. So as a commission, they declared an emergency, and under these conditions, through civil defense, is the only way we can activate the military, When we had done this and called them, well, the word was out, and everybody was involved. The governor immediately, had the military on its way, and I even wonder sometimes if they weren't on the way before we even asked for them, because they were here so quick--not the helicopters, but the ground troops, the people that could come in and be here to help with crowd control. We didn't know what we was going to have. They came in with complete operation center themselves, and they fell under our direction, in fact, they fell under my direction, as far as telling them what we wanted done. They brought in their

14 staffing people, they brought in record keepers--the whole group of people -11- were brought in, and they kept records for us those first two or three days, until we could get on our feet and start keeping our own records. C: How do you keep your own records? M: We had people come in. We evaluated ourselves and we had secretaries come in. My personal secretary here at the college came in and spent a week up there. The college gave everybody a week off and she came up and spent a week there. We had other girls come in that were in the area that we were aware of, and asked them if they couldn't come in and take minutes of all the meetings, and everything that was going on. C: Are the minutes of these meetings available? M: They are available and they are in the records at our office. C: We can get copies of them? M: Yes, they are all open to the public, C: What was your first order of priority as far as the cleanup was concerned? M: I guess when the waters started subsiding, our problem was, people were wanting to get back to their homes. This was the big problem. They were trying to get back before the water ever slowed down, and it was still going through town. It was one problem that we had. And I don't blame them. I have the same type of feeling. I want to get back to my property and see what has happened. After the initial wave went through--even that first Sunday evening, there was people trying to get back to their homes. So I guess our first priority was: try to make their homes accessible to them, and to keep them out until we could, because we didn't want somebody out there and getting in trouble. We didn't know what the structure looked like, whether they was sound, people walking through them. They could get in problems this way. There was no, really any way, they could get back to their homes. I think after we'd got this word to them, that we'd secured

15 -12- the area, that there would be no vandalism, the people that had homes out there, they was worried someone was going to steal what was left. That was a real worry to them, and it was to us, too. But we tried to secure the area with the state police, and with the Bonneville Patrol, and we had the Fish and Game Department in here, all on security, and that was pretty much set up that first night. So I guess our biggest problem, initially, was trying to keep the people from getting back to their homes, keep them out of the flood area. I think when we got into Sunday, that they started realizing this and it helped. We held church services around here in the community, and that took care of most people. Although there were quite a few people, I found out later, that got boats and headed back over, through fences, cut fences down, and just took, stuck their boats toward their home. We didn't keep everybody out, but I think we kept enough people out that it wasn't a problem. It wasn't the big problem it could have been. People started believing us. They believed us. They felt that we knew what we were doing. At least I got the feeling from them. But they was still anxious. I believe it was Monday before we even started letting people in. I don't know the exact time it.. maybe in to Tuesday before we really opened the whole area up. Then it was still hard for them to get to their homes. So we tried to get the debris cleared off the roads, so people could get back to their homes, because they needed to get back then, because we did have problems with people trying to get into the county, scavengers, or whatever you want to call them, that would go around and look for things to pick up and throw in their transportation, their pickups, cars, or trucks, or whatever. We caught several people trying to do this, and we caught them coming tn. In fact, into the Sunday, when we were up in the helicopters, I noticed up over the dry farms, dust coming across the dry farms, from the Heise area, and so I directed the helicopter pilot, let's just kind of fly up that way and see what in the devil is going on. There were people

16 -13- coming up through Kelly Canyon, coming over through there and finding some of those back roads and getting into the county that way. The security was moved clear out to Heise, clear out on that bridge. So there was people trying to get in. We had complaints that we'd sealed the county off too tight. We might have overreacted there. I don't think so, cause that was necessary to keep the undesirable - type people out, although it did interfere with family trying to get in. That was a hard thing for them to understand, and it would be for me, too, We had, I don't know how many thousand people, we have about seventeen thousand or something like that in the county, and if each one of them had a brother and sister and mother and their dad come in, look how much the county would increase. We was having enough problems and work trying to feed what we had, clothing, sleeping areas, and they really didn't think about that. I don't think they were thinking about that. They wanted to get their family in to help them. We tried to encourage them to waid until we could get everything organized to where their families could come in. When they came, they had to bring their own food, and if they stayed overnight, they'd have to have somewhere to sleep, something to drink. They weren't thinking about that. There wasn't any tools in here at this time that they could really go out and do any work. I think pretty soon they started to realizing that. We organized through the stakes to have people come in on buses, special passes for them to get tn,organized groups--so they knew they had to be prepared to bring their own food and then they'd be leaving, because there just wasn't any accomodatfons in the county. I think in the initial hours, that was pretty hard for the community to really understand that, that that was a real problem. If you triple your county, all you'd have to have is three of your relations come in and you triple the county. There was just nothing here that we could handle them with, C: The first time you got up in a helicopter and surveyed the area, do you recall

17 -14- what your feelings were? M: It was quite a sickening feeling. You could see the homes down there, scattered all over, machinery from one end of the county to the other; clear up into trees. And again, you worried about the people, not so much the property damage, we were still concerned with, "I hope we got everybody out," because that was our primary mission, and that's an important one, I feel. Let's save our lives. That was a real concern to us. As time went on, we found out that there wasn't many deaths. We felt very fortunate about that. But then from there on, it was just strictly lots of work, just trying to bring everything back in. I guess the Saturday, the Sunday morntng--we went to bed, I don't know what time it was, I think it was two or three o'clock in the morning and we had our meeting about five or four that morning to start the Sunday out with--i was walking down towards Main Street. I really didn't sleep too much that night. I got up early and I was walking down towards Main Street, kind of a wind blowing that morning, just dead silence, nothing--a few dogs barking here and-there and that was it. No movement of people. The mud and the smell and even the taste was a real eerie feeling, The wind blowing, whistling through some of those buildings that were abandoned now, and homes. It was a real eerie feeling. In fact, I would say tears came to my eyes, just that kind of feeling, knowing what had happened to our community. C: You were talking, Ron, about your visit down town on Sunday morning. Do you recall some other feelings that you had on that occasion? M: I guess my feeling was that I was thankful that my family was with me and that they were all okay. That's always a prime--no matter what responsibility you have in the community, or church, or whatever. I was real thankful my family was with me. We stayed on campus for the first two or three days. They'd made arrangements so that we could be close to the operation center, even though our home hadn't been destroyed. My family was with me that first night, and we were

18 -15- all well and all together, and I was real thankful for that. Almost felt ashamed that I still had a home. So many people had lost theirs, it almost made you feel ashamed that you still had a home. But you were sure grateful that you did. There was just no question about that. Then trying to realize the responsibility of trying to get everybody back in, working, keeping them going, what kind of impact was this going to have on the people? By this time I was probably back up to the OC, and our first concern now was, what resources do we have? I would say that the most discouraging thing I ever O experienced was, I tried to get in touch with the state office of the civil defense, and the only thing they wanted to know was, how many dead we had. They weren't concerned with anything else, as far as I could find out, at least the people that I was talking to. Maybe the organization was more concerned, but the people I was talking to wasn't. All they wanted to know is, "How many dead do you have?" That's the only thing I could get out of them. I could't get any information passed back and forth of what our needs were. I said,"i don't give a damn about the dead, I"m worrying about the living," and I hung up on them. I just didn't want anymore to do with them at that moment. I don't know if they appreciated that or not, but I was trying to take care of what we had. But that Sunday morning, in our meetings, we started taking a look at what resources we had in the community and what we could O do with our resources, We had people come in and volunteer to help, Davawn Beattie, and other people that was involved in heavy equipment. Our medical peopld came in. We had moved the fire department up and all of our emergency services were moved and in operation out of the OC, everything that was in the county that was in an emergency type operation, We had lost all of our telephones --no communication that way. The state police radios were pretty busy with their own business, so I would say during Saturday evening we did establish with communications and had it direct to Emergency Operation Center from the hospital,

19 -16- and from the iriahn ho 'al, and we had oc4 k14,kna - with KIGO, so we could inform the people. That was the only radio station in the area that we could really depend on. The Idaho Falls stations were busy with their own people down there. So we used the radio station KIGO. We had communications established with all emergency services and with all hospitals in the area, including the ones up north of us. So we had that communications line direct into us. We were worrying about resources. We had construction people come in Sunday morning, offering to volunteer all of their equipment. I guess that morning, what we did, mainly, was reassess everything that we had in the county and how we could put it to the best utilization to go help the people. C: Did it occur to you that perhaps the best thing to do was just leave it the way it was and go somewhere else? M: No, I don't think that ever occured to us. Our concern was to get everything going back, you know, fix it, that's the only thing that we had, We never did, that never was mentioned in any of our meetings, it never come across my mind. O Our mind was, how are we going to rebuild? Let's keep things going, let's get it back. And that's what we did that morning, is assess everything we had. It was never anything to leave it like it was. In fact, when the governor came over and talked with us, when he finally got here--in fact he O had a hard time getting into the county, we had it sealed off so tight (he complimented us on it because of the people that was out there trying to get in)--he sat down and told us what he was going to do for us, He outlined a lot of things that he was going to do for us. Commissioner Walker sat there and listened to, oh, for four or five minutes, listening to what he had said and he said, "May I say something?" The governor said, "Yes." He said, "Governor, we have done everything you said you are going to do for us. Now what can you do to help us and keep up with us?" You know, the ole governor,

20 -17- he sat back in his chair and it just took all the wind out of his sails. He didn't know what to say because, actually, what the governor had told that he was going to do for us, we had already done ourselves. He sat back and said, "Well what we're going to do then is try to keep up with you." That's the only thing he could say. So that's what happened. The people were sent in and were organized through the stake organizations, trying to help the people in the community to get back in. I would say into the week, about Tuesday, Wednesday, I had an elderly lady come in, tears in her eyes, her legs swelled up. She must have been into her seventies. Her legs were swelled up big, she looked like she had been bruised and just beat. It must have been later-- Thursday or Friday. She had been working on her home and all of a sudden, she had realized that it wasn't worth it, it was gone. She came with tears in her eyes and wondering what to do, just as discouraged as she could be. That"s a pretty hard situation to be with someone, an elderly person. I sat and talked with her for some time, and I says, the only thing I could think of was, I says, "Have you got a neighbor that needs help, that has got something that can be salvaged, that needs help?" She got a big smile on her face and said, "Yes, there is a young couple just down the road that really needs some help." She had an old cane, it was carved out of some kind of wood, I don't know what it was. She picked that up and I helped her down the stairs, and she had a great big smile on her face. She was going back to work. The only reason I did that was try to get her mind off her own troubles. I think that was what, as we discussed in our meetings in the mornings with the stake presidency and church leaders, was, "Let's keep the people busy so that they won't have time to worry about what has happened. Let's keep them working." That was our whole aim, was to keep everybody working. You can get tired and go home and go to bed and sleep good. If you are not busy and sit around and

21 -18- start looking at things and your neighbors, you can get real discouraged. Then at that time we started to bringing in outside help. They had a lot of fire, and a lot of encouragement for the people as they came in, and that helped. I think into that second Sunday, when we had the Prophet come, was probably one of the biggest boosters that we did for the community. We didn't do it, it was all offered. Things just worked that way. It was arranged. I think that helps a community when they can sit and listen to the Prophet talk to them. He gave them a lot of wise counsel, and I think that helped. I know it helped. I think those type of things with outside help, with keeping people busy--we had problems with the military sometimes, trying to keep up with us. The corps of engineers, as they came in to clean up the debris on blocks, they'd be assigned so many blocks to start on the next morning, and when they would go out to work on them, they'd all be clean, and they wouldn't know what to do. So we had a problem of coordinating the military and the volunteers, giving them sections of town. They couldn't keep up with the volunteers. The volunteers was cleaning up as fast, if not faster than they were. And as they'd assign blocks and things, they would go the next day to do the work and the work was done. They had never had that kind of a problem before. The people that came in from FDA (Federal Disaster Assistance) and other federal agencies, they were amazed that the people were working. They said every place else they'd gone, peopleld set around and watch and just set in a daze and just wouldn't do anything. In fact they would have to move them completely out of the community so that they could go to work. But here they had the opposite problem, they couldn't keep up with them. Everybody was working, trying to get their homes back in shape. They didn't understand that. They had never had that kind of problem. In fact, we wrote some things on the board, and I don't remember the scripture reference, anyway, it says, "When you are in the service of your fellowman, you are only in the service of your

22 -19- Heavenly Father," something like that. I noticed this, a lot of federal people come in the government from Washington, D. C. We had that in a big sign up on the blackboard and they sat down7-we would have the scripture reference and everything on there--and they'd write that down and put it in their pocket. It was quite interesting to watch them, and they'd read that. We had different down. sayings like that around the command post. We put up a different one every day or so. They would come in, and they would look for it, and then write it C: Was there ever any time that there was conflict between agencies at the command post? M: No, not that I can think of--not conflict. I'd say probably that there was times when they didn't agree on what the solution should be, but before the meeting was over, everybody was in agreement how we should do something. Our problem was that we could get the local contractors to go out and get some work done. Like some of the government agencies that came in, we went out on a canal to watch them. They were supposed to remove the debris from a canal. They were digging under a trailer house that had floated into one, all mangled up in the canal. They asked them, why don't you just take that trailer house out? They were trying to get the trees out and everything else. He said,"i can't touch that," because of some law that they had, they couldn't touch that type of things. But they were supposed to be out there moving debris. I remember there were some exciting times of telling those people, though, they just as well move that out, and actually sometimes doing it for them, because of the laws that says they couldn't move that type of debris. A lot of laws were conflicting with each other that way. C: Who had the final authority in those cases? M: The county commissioners did. C: And did they exercise it?

23 -20- M: They sure did. And that disturbed the government sometimes, but in the long run, it saved the community a lot of money. As hard as it was to get all that done, and as much time as the commissioners put in, they went right out sometimes and actually physically had to do some of the work themselves, or tell the people and take the responsibility. They would say, "We'll assume that responsibility in the county." They can and they did--a lot of times they did. C: Was martial law officially instituted? M: I don't think there was ever any martial law that was instituted. It was just a real tight security. There was hours that wasn't allowed on the street, but we never declared a matial law, as such. We put a curfew that after such a time--i don't remember the time now, I think it was nine o'clock or something, I don't remember the exact times now--but there was a time set that nobody should be out in the country wandering around, or on the streets, or on even the main roads. And that was a reasonable time. It was after dark. We set our time so that it'd be after dark or at dusk, so the people securing the county could watch and see, And anybody out after that time ought to have a pass, or there was some real intensive investigation, what they were doing, searching their cars and everything, In fact, I had my pass pulled from me three times. I finally went up and got one and they wrote on it they hadn't better pull it again. I found out they was collecting mine, They were very tight, in the evening expecially. We just didn't want anybody out there. The people, I think, afterward, realized that all we was trying to do is to secure their property for them. It was pretty, tough to be told you cart go back to your home after a certain hour, like up to Sugar City. You just can't go back up there. Go back up to the college and stay in the apartment and stay there, That's pretty tough to tell somebody, that.

24 -21- C: Were there people who were trapped in their homes whom you had to rescue? M: There were people that stayed there because they wanted to--they had time to get out. Now there was, out in some of the rural areas, that they figured they wouldn't have problems, and they did, but it didn't actually get into their homes. Some of them went on some roofs in Sugar City, and staved in their homes and things like this. One lady, I understand, really didn't understand what was going on, or didn't get picked up, or something. There 4 was some of that. Not a great deal. Wel, h out in the farming community, a young lady that was pregnant and was having a baby, about the second day, and there was still water around and we had to fly a helicopter out and pick her up and bring her in. There was no water on her place, but she couldn't get out. Those type of things. C: As the clean up operations progressed, was there a loosening of the security measures? M: Yes, in fact, within the county, I would say into the second week, anybody that had a 1M license plate had free run of the county, in and out, They had to have a pass to get back in. But with a 1M license plate within the county there was no problems. It was people that had, like out of county license plates, out of state license plates. It was relaxed, we felt, quite a bit, but it was still quite tight on the perimeter. Usually if they lost it, or didn't have one and they had a 1M license plate and they'd look at their driver's license, see they was residents of Madison County. They might have been hassled a little, say, "Get your pass so we can let you in and out faster. But they had complete access inside of the county, once they were inside of the county, they could drive anywhere. And once in a while they would pull their driver's license, the security would, and see what part of the county they lived in, and if they was on the opposite end of the county,

25 -22- they would ask them what in the devil they was doing over there, you know, to get the feel if they was going to help or just what. But within the county there wasn't very much, if you had a 1M license plate. C: Were there any complaints about that kind of treatment? M: There was a lot of complaints. C: How did you handle those? M: We tried to explain to them why. The main complaint was they couldn't get their families in. We had a lot of complaints about that. Then we had complaints, sometimes, I don't know what happened out on the security lines, but they even turned work people away, back home, and that shouldn't have happened, but it did. I guess we'd rather have, between the two evils--if that's an evil, I don't know--between the two things, we'd rather turn some away than let some in that shouldn't have been tn. C: Were there those who got in who were involved in unlawful activities? M: Yes, even as tight as it was, some of them got in. Not many--we didn't have much of it--but there were some. C: Were any of them caught? M: Yes. C: What happened to them? M: They were taken down and some of them were put in a county jail somewhere for a day or two. Some of them got their hands slapped. I don't know, what the worst penalty... I didn't follow that end up. I know some of them were put in jail for a month or so. That was for looting. I don't think anybody went to state prison over it--not that I am aware of. C: Were there local people that were involved with that too? M: I understand there was. There were some local people--not many, C: Who had the responsibility for issuing passes to get around the county?

26 -23- M: Gray Clawson took over security for the county and it was under his direction, through the state police. But Gray Clawson was actually over security. C: Was he under your jurisdiction? M: He's under the direction of the county commissioners. C: So actually, it was separate from the civil defense? M: Well, everybody was under civil defense during that operation, I mean the whole thing was a civil defense organization. Everything that was brought in, federal aid, and everything, is through the civil defense, So in an emergency operation the entity within the county that operates is civil defense. The same if you was building a road, and road and bridge crew would build a road, and those who would be supporting them would work under their direction. C: Were there any what you would consider unuaual events, that took place? M: Oh, there was some funny things that are unusual. We had, one time, the health department come in, on the burying of cattle. There is a law that says you have to have so many feet of dirt over them, so many feet between the cattle and you bury them, and everything, The guy out there that was burying the cattle was putting them in, they was packing them in, putting dirt over them, covering them up, and the health inspector that went out said, "You can't do it." And he stopped their operation for several hours because we had the dump trucks and everything going there just as steady as we could, The guy on the machinery, that was running the cat, told the guy if he didn't get out of his road, he'd bury him right along with the dead cattle, And actually the inspector that was there stood in front of the cat and wouldn't let him move it. The guy started up his cat and took after him. I think he would have buried him, if he hadn't got out of his road. Some tense moments like that, where we had some problems complying with the state and federal regulations.

27 -24- Sometimes you got to use common sense when you go to work, too, and I think there was a lot of it used in the county. We probably made a few mistakes. Then the Bangs disease in the cattle we have in the county. And we had some health inspectors coming in and says we're going to have to separate the cattle, find out, you know, go out and check them all, those that had bangs and things. He didn't want them mixed up. The county commissioner, Keith Walker, got a big grin on his face, and he says, I forget his exact words, but to the effect, if they weren't all mixed up in that flood they never will be, and sent him on his way. We just didn't have, you know, we'd just rounded them all up and put the, why there was cattle from one end of the county, just all over the place, so we was trying to round the live cattle up O and put them in a corral and keep them together. And he didn't like that. He wanted a lot of things that way. Then getting rid of debris the homes and trees and the different types of rubble--there is a lot of federal regulations on where you can bury it and what you can do with the drain fields and things. O That was a problem, trying to get all those all solved to where we were in compliance with the law. We had to talk with some officials, and get one of the health officials taken right out of the county, and he was removed from the county. C: Why was that? M: He was stopping the complete clean up operation of the county. He was going to put everybody in stop and throw everybody in jail. So we just called the state office and told them the problems we was having. They took him out and sent another man in, much easier to work with, much more common sense. It was a young kid, and he only knew what he'd read in a book. He didn't seem to have any common sense. C: The one that was thrown out?

28 -25- M: Yes. I don't know, really, what happened to him. One day he was there, and the next day, we never did see him again. We never did ask where he went either. We just made a call asking him to be removed and he was removed. We never asked where he went or a thing. I'll say, all and all, over the whole thing, that the reason that people moved out is that they believed their leaders, the people that they had elected officials, and when they had told them what had happened, they believed them, and I think the reason for this at this time, one of them was a bishop, the other two were in stake presi- dencies, and in our community, those are the leaders in the community. They just believed them--there was no disbelief. Oh, there was disbelief, yes. But I mean the overall majority, they believed what was happening, they believed their leaders, and they believed what they was being told. One experience happened when we went up northern Idaho for a critique of what happened, General Brooks and myself, and Hugh Fowler from FDAA (Federal Disaster Assistance Agency), went up there, and we was going to give a debriefing of what had happened. The federal government went first, and then the state government, and then it was my turn. And General Brooks, Adjutant-general and also over the National Guard for the state of Idaho, get up and give his presentation. At the end of it, he said, I want to tell you something. He says, "I have never seen a community operate like that." He says, "If the military was well organized as that community, there would be no people in the world could take us over." And he started explaining how we met in our meetings in the mornings, and we brought in the stake presidents, decision making people within the community. And he took the stake presidents, and he even mentioned the bishops, that they'd go back to the bishops and he explained that the-- most of the people there weren't members of the church, in fact very few of them--he explained that a stake was over a geographic area, a large geographic