Page 22 - Flathead Beacon // 6.4.14

22 | JUNE 4, 2014 COVER FLATHEADBEACON.COM

Darrell Williamson describes his experience outrunning the loodwaters along Birch Creek during the lood of 1964.
GREG LINDSTROM | FLATHEAD BEACON

before heading for the water again. With the cat on his neck, THE FLOOD BY THE NUMBERS
he visited the very embankment he clambered up to escape
clawing into his skin, and the dog swimming at his side, Bill- the rushing water.
edeaux slowly made it back to shore.
“It left its mark,” Williamson said, looking across the
With the animals safe, Billedeaux and his brother waited 30
creek and toward the mountains. “If it had happened at night

for their parents, who had left before the house looded to help a I don’t think there would have been anyone left. I just thank
family friend. It would be more than a week before any of them People who died on the Blackfeet Indian
God we survived.”
returned home.
After the lood, Williamson and his family moved into a Reservation during the lood of 1964
Meanwhile, nearly 70 miles to the south near Birch Creek, shack in Browning and a year later they moved into a 20-by-
an even deadlier scenario was unfolding.
24-foot temporary home in Heart Butte that still stands to- 2
Williamson, his uncle and father awoke early with plans to day.
travel to Browning that morning. After surveying the washed- For his part, a few days after the lood Billedeaux and his
Dams that broke on June 8, 1964 that
out the roads, they decided to stay home. Later that morning, as family headed for Browning, where the Red Cross had set up
the water in Birch Creek continued to rise, Williamson’s father resulted in more than two dozen deaths
refugee camps and cached supplies. Each person was allowed
decided to take the family to higher ground. After packing their 31,000
to take three shirts, three pairs of pants, three pairs of socks,
cars, they drove upstream to another family member’s house.
a pair of boots and a coat. Billedeaux said it was the irst time
As they watched the water rise from their vehicles, Wil- he had ever received new clothes, mostly because his mother
liamson saw cattle running downstream as a growing wall of was “good at patching knees.” A week or two later, his family
water cascaded toward them. The Swift Dam, about 10 miles Acre feet of water that lowed downstream returned to Babb to assess the damage. As they walked into
away, had ruptured. The doors of the two vehicles swung from the breached Swift Dam
the home, his mother broke down, realizing the family, which

open and everyone scurried up a steep embankment to higher 800,000
had little to begin with, had lost everything, including the
ground.
family photos.
“Once we got to the top of the hill, my grandmother’s house, “That’s when I realized what had really happened,” Bill-
which was upstream, loated by,” Williamson said. “I’ll never Cubic feet per second: speed the water went edeaux said. “The devastation hadn’t sunk in because up until
forget the look on my father’s face as he watched his mother’s that point it had been an adventure.”
home go by.”
down Birch Creek
Besides the obvious human toll of the lood of 1964, Wil-
While everyone in Williamson’s immediate family was ac- liamson and Billedeaux said the event forced many from the
8”
counted for, the true toll of the lash lood was beginning to re- land on which they were born and raised. More people decid-
veal itself when they found seven of his cousins from the New- ed to move to towns like Browning and Heart Butte and over
Breast family walking toward them. The kids, who ranged in Amount of water that fell in Browning during time that changed the tribe’s culture and its relationship with
age from 2 to 11 years old, told them their mother had taken a 36-hour period
the land. Both men still vividly recall the events of 50 years
them to higher ground but then she turned back toward their ago, and both said, until recently, they had talked little about
house. Both of their parents and their sister Patricia were miss- 265
their experiences in the lood.
ing. They later found the father’s body downstream, but the “I can remember it like yesterday,” Billedeaux said.
mother and daughter were never accounted for.
“That’s true,” Williamson added. “I can’t remember what

Fifty years later, on a windy afternoon, the question of Homes destroyed in the lood
I did yesterday, but I can tell you about the lood of ‘64.”
where his aunt or cousin ended up still haunted Williamson as
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