Page 20 - Flathead Beacon // 6.4.14

20 | JUNE 4, 2014 COVER
FLATHEADBEACON.COM

Darrell Williamson looks across Birch Creek on the same embankment he climbed 50 years earlier to escape the lood waters.
GREG LINDSTROM | FLATHEAD BEACON
H

EART BUTTE – Along feet, “being stuck inside was a punish-
the bucolic waters of ment,” Billedeaux said.

Birch Creek, the scars of While the Billedeaux boys were
the 1964 lood are still playing with their friends that morn-
painfully clear. What was ing, Blackfeet Irrigation Project work-
once a lush, small valley at the foot of ers were scrambling to prevent water
the Rockies is now a loodplain riddled from lowing into area canals because of
with gravel and rock. Fifty years ago this breaks downstream. With nowhere else
creek swelled to a raging river, a quarter to go, the water began to back up and

mile wide and nearly 40 feet deep.
lood Saint Mary Lake, according to Bill-
“A lot of old memories come back to edeaux. Within a few hours, his family’s
me,” said Darrell Williamson, 60, as he lakeshore house was surrounded by wa-
looked across the creek south of Heart ter.
Butte. “A lot of painful memories, too. When Billedeaux returned home
My aunt and cousin are still out there he realized that two of the family’s
somewhere.”
three pets – a dog named Dolby and a
At least 19 people died on the banks cat named Cat – were still inside. The

of Birch Creek on June 8, 1964, when the 10-year-old swam nearly 1,000 feet to-
157-foot high Swift Dam was breached, ward the house, reaching the roof of the
sending 31,000 acre feet of water down- family’s looded 1955 Chevy Nomad sta-
stream at a rate of 800,000 cubic feet per tion wagon. After catching his breath,
second.
Washed-out dam at Lower Two Medicine Lake. COURTESY GLACIER NATIONAL PARK
Billedeaux headed for the front door.
While well-deserved attention has Unknown to him, the water level in- June 8, when 8 inches of rain fell in the old and was living on the shores of Lower
been given to the impact of the lood of side was lower than outside and when Browning area in less than 36 hours. Saint Mary Lake near Babb, on the east-

1964 in the Flathead Valley – thanks in he pushed open the door, he rode in on a That abnormal rainfall, coupled with a ern edge of Glacier National Park, with
part to the Hungry Horse News’ Mel tidal wave.
massive melting snowpack, led to one his parents and older brother. On the
Ruder and his Pulitzer Prize winning “For a moment (when I was under- of Montana’s worst natural disasters. In morning of June 8, school was canceled
coverage – there is less coverage of its water), I probably thought that was the just one day, more than 260 homes were in Babb because neither the students nor
devastating impact on the Blackfeet end,” he said. “But once I hit the back destroyed and countless families were teachers could drive through the muddy,
Indian Reservation. No one was killed wall and the water leveled back out I re- left homeless.
washed-out roads in the area. Unfazed
in the Flathead when its namesake alized I’d be OK.”
“We all knew what was going on by the storm or the rising waters, Bill-
river overran its banks, but at least 30 Crawling his way to the top of the here,” said Mike Billedeaux. “But the edeaux, his brother and a few other lo-

people died east of the divide when the kitchen counter, Billedeaux was able to rest of the world didn’t.”
cal kids hiked into the hills east of their
Swift and Two Medicine dams broke on
spot Dolby and Cat and grabbed them
Billedeaux had just turned 10 years
home. Back then, for a kid on the Black-