In contrast to those who stood around and wondered was L. D. Smith, of Greeley, Colorado, who with his family was camped in a trailer at the Beaver Creek Campground a couple of miles downstream from Hebgen Dam. The loud noise and rumbling woke him. Outside the trailer, he found the water rising. The ground was shaking violently. He didn’t know what was causing it, but his first thought was that the dam had broken. The steep-walled canyon didn’t seem like a safe place for his family. As soon as the shaking subsided temporarily, he loaded his wife and two youngsters into the car and drove away from the dam, the collapse of which he instinctively felt was the greatest danger, as fast as he could.
A mile or two before he reached the slide, he ran into heavy dust. Still fearful of what the dam’s collapse would mean for those trapped in the deep canyon, when the slide blocked his path he turned off the road and drove up the north side of the canyon wall to a point where he couldn’t get any more traction. He then got his family out of his car and moved them to still higher ground.
Later in the evening his family joined the Osts and Fredericks around the fire on the hillside.
At about 8:00 o’clock on the same gorgeous moonlight night of August 17, the Purley Bennett family of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, pulled their trailer off alongside the road on the flat at the mouth of the Madison Canyon Gorge. They didn’t plan to set up camp—just to rest for a few hours before continuing to the park. They talked a bit with others camped in the same informal area, then turned in. Purley, a 43-year-old truck driver, and his wife, Irene, slept in the trailer. The youngsters—Carole, 17; Phillip, 15; Tom, 10, and Susan, 5, stretched out in bedrolls outside on the ground.
“A car blew past, rolling over and over.”(Christopherson)
They were awakened a little before midnight by a loud rumbling noise. They wondered what it was, but weren’t concerned enough to get up or move their equipment. Some time later, in response to a much louder noise, Bennett left the trailer to see about the children. Mrs. Bennett was right behind him. As she stepped out of the trailer, she felt a strong wind coming up. There was a great rumbling, whooshing sound, and as the wind reached hurricane velocity she saw her husband grab a small tree for support. The wind swept him off his feet—he hung on like a flag tied to a mast. After a little bit he let go and was blown away. She never saw him again. She couldn’t see her children, except one flying through the air. A car was blown by, rolling over and over, and she found herself swept along with the trees, the rocks, and water.
The Bennett car—thrown out from under the huge slide onto the dried-up stream bed below.(U. S. Forest Service)
“When I came to,” she said, “I was jammed against a tree with a log on my back. I don’t know how I got out. I thought I was the only one of my family still alive.”