  All through the night, the Osts, the Fredericks, and the others trapped above the slide shuddered with each new quake, and then listened for the repeated thunderous crashings of the avalanches which echoed loudly against the canyon walls. Every 15 to 20 minutes all that morning there would be another shock. Flooded stream. They were thankful that their families were complete. Fredericks, nearly exhausted from his work in helping rescue those trapped by the rapidly advancing water above the slide, tried to sleep, but the excitement and uncertainty kept the whole group awake. At dawn, which came at about five, the first of the many small planes flew over the canyon. The light gave the group a clear view of the opposite side of the canyon, and they could see how the mountain had turned loose, crashing down onto the canyon floor, surging up the other side of the canyon to a height two-thirds of the height of its original location, and then shooting both up and down the canyon. They could now see the mud, debris and the accumulating water which had covered their cars and camp. In the early light they used merthiolate and dressings from a first-aid kit to treat the worst of the previous night’s injuries. The two dozen eggs, somehow rescued intact in their flight up the canyon side, fried with canned potatoes and served on bread, plus coffee made a heartening breakfast. The Smiths, who’d fled the Beaver Creek Campground at the time of the quake, joined them, making a total of 21 in the group. A small, orange and silver plane swooped low, circled, and waving its wings, flew east toward the dam. They took heart in the fact that they’d been discovered. Parachute drops from air rescue. Half an hour later, the plane flew over again, very low, dropping an orange streamer fastened to an envelope. The envelope was torn open by a branch, and the message floated down by itself. With fresh horror they read it. It said, “Fire down by river bridge on ridge top. Get going.” It was signed simply, “Ost.” Hurriedly they looked around for smoke. Seeing none, frightened, trapped in a strange, wild country, with all nature seeming to turn against them, they knew not where to turn. Helicopter evacuation. In an effort to find out about the fire, Ost borrowed the hip boots a woman had given Fredericks and started off in the direction of the slide. The plane circled over him and wagged its wings, an action he interpreted to mean that he was going in the right direction. He continued, climbing the muddy lower end of the slide, the rubble, the great cube-shaped boulders, big as cars, all mixed in with trees, some stripped bare, others still complete with all their branches. On the slide he met two men walking in from the outside. They told Ost that the river bridge was 15 miles upstream, past the dam, and advised him to keep the group where it was until helicopter help came. The plane message about the fire was still a mystery. It remained so for several months, until Ost finally got it explained. The message had been one of several dropped from “Doesn’t it strike you as almost planned?” Rev. Ost said when he got the explanation. At 11:30 A. M. the two Forest Service smokejumpers, part of a group of eight who’d jumped farther up the canyon, hiked in. They had first aid equipment and food. They reassured the group that a helicopter was on its way to rescue them. Shortly after noon, the Johnson Flying Service helicopter arrived, landing precariously on the canyon-side slope. Mrs. Ost and George Whitmore, the Fredericks nephew, both with eye injuries, were the first two taken out. The helicopter ferried them over the slide to a point on the highway where Highway Patrol cars sped them—at 80 miles an hour where rocks hadn’t made the road hazardous—to Ennis, to medical care, comfort, and safety. By the time the helicopter had taken seventeen of the group over, the turbulence of an oncoming storm made the air so treacherous that the four remaining men walked up the canyon, were driven to a safer landing point at the upper end of the canyon. They saw the cracks and damage at Hebgen Dam. The helicopter picked them up, and they joined their families in Ennis. “We’d lost our money, our cars, our clothes,” Mrs. Fredericks said. “The Red Cross didn’t ask us any questions about whether we had any money or not. They just helped. They sent us to stores and got us all two complete outfits. They told us to make any calls home—to our relatives—that we wanted to. And they’re flying us home. “We’re certainly going to be ardent Red Cross workers from now on!” That night they stayed—dormitory style in the Ennis High School Gym—as Mrs. Fredericks put it, “An anvil chorus, each snoring in his own language.” Conditioned by the quake of the night before, when the town siren blasted off at 9:00 P. M. the quake victims jumped “I’m damned if I’m going to be caught in my pajamas again,” she said. The Osts moved up to the Shermont Motel in Sheridan, where Mrs. Ost recuperated from her face and eye injury. Miraculously, though the whole side of her face was massively bruised, no bones were broken. That Saturday they were guests of the Madison County Fair at Twin Bridges. On Sunday the Red Cross flew them from Butte back to their homes in New York. The Fredericks moved to the Finlen Hotel in Butte while George Whitmore had treatment for his more serious eye injury. “Everyone was so wonderful. A bellhop drove us all around, showing us this exciting town. The people at the hotel took up a collection and gave us some money. You couldn’t have better people.” The Fredericks flew back to Elyria that same Sunday, leaving George Whitmore in the hospital for further treatment. “The irony of it all,” Mrs. Fredericks said, “is that we still didn’t get to see Yellowstone Park.” Refugees by the lake. The main, Red Canyon scarp runs for 7 miles along Kirkwood Ridge, parallel and about three miles above the north shore of Hebgen Lake.(Montana Highway Commission) Red Canyon scarp, continued |
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