“Somebody said something about a ‘little slide’.
“‘Little!’ I said to Dutch, ‘I’d hate like hell to see a big one!’
“The after-shocks that kept happening—with rocks crashing down and dirt and dust blowing up—didn’t contribute to our peace of mind, either. But we didn’t have much time to look.
“We struggled across the river—the slide had stopped the water, but left a muddy ooze and some water lying around in pools as much as three feet deep. We found Mrs. Irene Bennett lying in the rocky stream bed. She was cold and shivering. She didn’t have a stitch on. Neither did her son, Phillip, who was lying near her. Both of them were bruised and bashed. The Bennett boy had a broken right leg, shoulder, etc. We put Mrs. Bennett on an old wooden frame canvas cot and started across the slippery river bed with her. She must have weighed 180. As we struggled through the slippery muck she kept apologizing for causing us so much trouble, and told us about her husband and three other children, the other folks who were camped near her, and the tremendous spurt of wind and mud that threw them out from under the slide. She told how she’d come to—believing herself the only one of her family who’d survived. Despairing, she heard Phil calling from a spot 75 feet away where the water had thrown him. Their torn hands gave the story of the agonizing effort these crippled survivors had made to drag themselves together over the rocky stream bed.
“By radio we asked the Fish and Game Commission plane flying overhead to go to Ennis and get Dr. Losee and fly him back, and land him on the highway nearby. We didn’t want to disturb Mrs. Bennett by moving her off the cot, so we put her into a station wagon. Morris Staggers, who lives nearby, showed up with an old iron bedstead, older than anyone there, and heavier, too. I’ll never forget the struggle we had carrying the Bennett boy across on it.
Rescuers prepare to move body of T. Mark Stowe of Sandy, Utah, who perished as he was thrown out from under the slide. Note tremendous water damage and dry river bed.(United Press International)
“We took the Bennetts up to where the plane landed on the highway and turned them over to the doctor. Returning to the slide area, the increasing light made the slide seem even more formidable. That morning, working with Fish & Game Commission, etc., we found all of the people Mrs. Bennett had told us about except one. Like Mrs. Bennett and her son, all of these bodies had been stripped of their clothing and showed the effects of being beat to hell by wind and water. The coroner said all five of them died by drowning. We never did find Mrs. Marilyn Stowe, wife of Sandy, Utah elementary school music teacher T. Mark Stowe, whose body we did find—she must still be under the slide.
“I just don’t care to go through any more mornings like that,” Stevens said.