Whose gear? This collection of clothes and creel found below the slide, may be a clue to one of the victims still buried under huge pile of rock and debris.(Lewis—Montana Standard)
Volunteers from Ennis, Butte, Virginia City and elsewhere walked over the rugged slide for days searching for any kind of clue which might help. They turned up everything from fishing creels, camp equipment, and souvenir pillows to kids’ shoes. One slide-walker found an exposed roll of film which was immediately heralded as a hot lead. But when developed, the film turned out to have been ruined by the water. Their findings were kept in a county warehouse in Ennis. Much of it was claimed by those who’d escaped. The debris, so painstakingly gathered, helped little in the search for identity.
The quest evolved into the painful job of waiting, keeping lists, sifting names.
From the moment the quake occurred and the fact that there were casualties became known, phone calls, telegrams, and letters began surging in from all over the U. S. wanting to know about friends and relatives who might be in the area or among the victims.
Volunteer slide workers searched the huge 80-million-ton pile of rock for victims, and clues to identity of the buried.(Lewis—Montana Standard)
“The Disaster Service of the American Red Cross did a tremendous job through their teletype and telephone by taking over these inquiries and sending back information through the Home Service chapters,” Don Skerritt, Sheriff of Gallatin County, said.
One of the leads was a spaniel discovered wandering in the slide area the day after the quake. The animal wore a Salt Lake dog license tag. This seemed like a certain clue to the identity of some of the victims.
In response to Skerritt’s teletype inquiry, Salt Lake police found that the dog supposed to be wearing the tag had been killed months before. Someone had hung the collar in a gas station. Subsequently this collar was put on another dog. Further probing developed that the dog in the quake area belonged to the Ray Painters of Ogden, Utah. Mrs. Painter, one of the casualties, died in the Bozeman hospital a couple of days after the quake.