With daybreak came the first word on just what had happened. At 6 o’clock the planes reported (CA-1) as recorded in the Highway Department’s log.
“Slide area 43 mi. so. of Ennis. White sign on the top of dam reading OK-SOS. Road has gone into the lake on the road side. Mountain has gone into lake on opposite side. Cracks 6 to 8 ft. across the road. Slide is estimated to be ½ mi. long and 300-500 ft. deep. Water rising fast. About 50 cars stranded in the area. Estimated 150-200 people. The only way out by helicopter.”
Potter immediately called Johnson Flying Service, a pioneer regional flying outfit in Missoula, 200 miles from the slide, and ordered a helicopter for rescue work. He also asked for helicopter assistance from Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls, Montana, 190 miles to the north. Malmstrom’s rescue copter had blown a tire the day before, so they sent a jet to Salt Lake for a new one. Potter hollered for helicopters on the National Alert Warning System hot line.
“How many do you need?” he was asked.
“All you can get,” he answered.
In response, everything, flying amphibians, transports, in addition to helicopters, started moving toward the quake area—from the 41st Air Rescue Squadron, Hamilton Air Force Base in California, the 2849th Air Base Wing Rescue, Hill Air Force Base, Utah, the 3638th Flying Training Squadron, Stead AFB, Nevada, and the 4061st Support Group, Malmstrom AFB, Montana.
The Forest Service began moving in its well-organized rescue organization that morning, under the direction of Harvey Robe. Eight of the FS’s elite smokejumpers, trained in first aid, jumped in the canyon at 10:30 o’clock, with rescue equipment under the leadership of Al Hammond.
“When we made our parachute landings,” Hammond remembers, “The folks we came to rescue asked us, solicitously, if we were OK.”
The rescue of the people trapped in the canyon—it turned out that there were close to 300—proceeded smoothly. The Osts, Fredericks, and Smiths, all ambulatory, if shoeless were helicoptered out to the highway on the Ennis side of the slide, and taken in highway patrol cars to the hospital or to the dormitory improvised in the high school gym. The injured who’d been gathered at the Hebgen Dam end of the canyon were helicoptered out to West, and flown to the hospital in Bozeman.
