(upbeat music) - [Narrator] This is a production of South Dakota Public Broadcasting.

Program funding is made possible with your membership and with corporate support from Casey Peterson, Financial Advisors and CPAs.

Helping organizations, businesses, and individuals achieve their financial goals since 1977.

And by Rapid City attorney Brian Hagg of Hagg & Hagg Law Firm who characterized the flood this way.

"Out of tragedy came a strong resolve to rebuild a better Rapid City.

This is our legacy.

Support for SDPB Documentaries is also provided by the Leo P. Flynn Estate, Kitty Kinsman and Steve Zellmer and by Charles and Kay Riter.

- [Robb] The Rapid City mayor, Don Barnett said a few minutes ago, that's been about 10:40 PM that any citizens living on property abutting Rapid Creek should leave immediately.

He said all of those properties throughout the city should be abandoned.

The mayor said that to quote, "The situation is going to get a lot worse before it gets better."

- [Woman Survivor] I just remember that there wasn't any water and then there was.

(camera snapping) - [Man Survivor] It uh... it happened so damn fast.

- [Man Survivor] And just literally in seconds, the water's up to my knees and stuff.

And the current is so strong.

We couldn't make it.

- [Woman Survivor] Pretty soon there was a great big log came up right by the windshield.

(camera snapping) - [Woman Survivor] I remember stuff coming through this speedometer, water coming through this speedometer and it opened up the, the glove compartment.

And you know all of the, the radio.

- [Man Survivor] There was no swimming that night, I'm telling you were just moving with the current.

And as fast as you were moving in the current things were going by you like ruptured propane tanks.

Well when they hit something, they would explode like a bomb.

- [Man Survivor] And you could hear from where we were people screaming and the river running and this and that.

And then pretty soon, they wouldn't scream anymore.

- [Man Survivor] There was a great big chunk of the roof hanging up in a Cottonwood tree about a quarter of a mile East of here.

And we measured it and it measured 27 feet from that piece of roof down to the crick bottom.

So that's how deep the water got coming through this area here.

- [Man Survivor] I looked ahead and, and I thought, "My God, that's a house coming down the road.

How can there be a house in the road?"

- [Man Survivor] Two story houses were floating like a cork.

Just bobbed away.

- [Man Survivor] Lots and lots of thunder and lightning and people screaming and yelling, "Help, help!"

And there's no way you could help 'em.

(camera snapping) - [Man Survivor] It looked like it'd been hit by bombs.

- [Man Survivor] There was just not a single board left of the house.

- [Man Survivor] The magnitude, I didn't have a clue there were gonna be 230 plus people die.

- [Man Survivor] Terrible, terrible experiences.

Finding people that's just like picking up jello.

They were so broke up from the water, just beating them up.

- [Man Survivor] It was almost like well, I don't know.

Like death was hanging over the whole area.

(dramatic piano music) - [Narrator] Friday June 9th, 1972.

An air mass pushes up the Eastern slopes of South Dakota's Black Hills.

Powerful thunderstorms develop, winds are weak so the storms hover over the mountains.

Some locations receive 15 inches of rain in six hours.

Flood warnings are issued, but no one comprehends the scale of what's about to happen.

A flood surge, like a liquid avalanche rolls down Rapid Creek toward Rapid City.

50 years ago one of the nation's deadliest natural disasters begins.

Around 9:00 PM rain is falling and the water is rising in Rapid Creek.

29 year old Rapid City Mayor.

Don Barnett is on the city's West side, monitoring the situation.

- I had not put the warning out yet.

And I went to the upper levels of Canyon Lake, where there was an old wooden bridge that crossed at the very top of Canyon Lake.

And it was about 300 yards downstream from the fish hatchery.

And I pulled off the side of the road and I saw a crew from Montana Dakota Utilities, and they were pulling on a industrial size wrench trying to get the natural gas service, which was attached to that old wooden rotten bridge.

And so the manager of the gas company, George Miller ran over, he said, "Come on mayor, give us a hand!"

So I stepped out willing to help.

And I would say within five seconds, I was wet from the top of my head to the bottom of my toes.

And we reached over there and it was about a six or seven foot wrench, and we all pulled on it and we heard the, "Crunch, crunch, crunch."

And within about a minute, we had that gas line blocked off.

And we looked up and saw this small car.

It was rolling in the creek and going up and down and underwater.

And it looked to be in terrible, terrible danger.

And George said, "My goodness Don, I hope nobody's in that car."

And then the car hit the wooden bridge and went under and got blocked with something.

And a few minutes later, we were standing there the crew was ready to move on to the next challenge.

And George said, "My goodness Don, somebody could get killed in this thing."

And then I heard this crunch and the bridge imploded and floated into the middle of Canyon Lake.

And I looked at George, I said, "I'm gonna find a phone and put out the warning right now.

- [Narrator] Captain James Whitehead is sent West of Rapid City after a day of training with the National Guard.

- [James] We were down at the Daisy Dell Drive In for supper that night when it started raining.

And when I got home, it was all over the radio that uh, we were supposed to report to our duty station.

They dispatched another, major and I. I was a captain at the time, up to Johnson sighting to see what the weather was like up there.

And we got down this far on 44 where the water was running across the road from that other canyon there.

So we couldn't even go any further.

And then there was an older couple, would've been about 50 yards from where we left him and they were just standing out there and the water was about chest high then.

And so I helped them get into a tree.

And I figured it was about time for me to get into a tree.

So I got up into one of these big Oak trees here and pretty dark.

And all of a sudden, something hit the, hit the tree.

And it was a house that floated down and hit the tree.

And...

I thought, "Whoa boy you know, it was really, I could feel the roots popping.

And while I was in the tree, I'd just shake the tree every time one of them big roots would break.

And I thought, (chuckling) "Well if this tree goes over, the only choice is to jump on the roof of the house and see what happens after that."

But... it held and uh, and then the water you know, it just kept going and it was just so noisy.

You couldn't hear somebody, But I seen propane tanks, semis going down through here, houses... whenever the lightning would light it up to where you could see.

And it was just, it was really terrible.

- [Narrator] Teenager Robbie Corner is out with friends, looking at flood damage.

When they return to his mother's creekside home on the city's far Western edge, they find it surrounded by fast moving water.

- So we stood there and debated, you know should we try to get to the house?

But about that point... houses started washing by where we were standing there and propane tanks.

And propane tanks were hitting trees and exploding.

And people were on the roof, roofs of the houses that were floating by and they were screaming.

Um... And so you know, we could just see there's, there's no way we're gonna be able to get to the house and hoped that they had gotten out of there while we were gone.

The water was just washing over the highway down here.

It was coming out of Nameless Cave Road and that canyon, and it was just like pouring over the highway embankment right here, down into this canyon.

And I can, I can remember that it sounded like a freight train.

I mean you couldn't just talk in a normal voice.

You had to like yell because that was so loud.

And uh... so before too long, some National Guard were going up the highway there.

And I guess, we were yelling at 'em to see if there's any way they could, you know do something to see if my mom and my neighbors had escaped.

And they said there was nothing they could do.

And they also told us we couldn't stay there where we were standing.

And so we put up an argument, but they basically just grabbed us and hauled us up the hill and the house which is now Mid-State Camper Sales was owned then by a family by the name of Paseka.

And so they took us up to that house and all night long they were bringing in other people into that house.

- [Narrator] Dave Baumberger was moving items out of his father's low lying home, along Rapid Creek.

- [Dave] And we came in, my dad, and a old friend of the family and me and we walked in and we walked to the house and we started getting some stuff out of the house.

And the water started coming up in higher than we were comfortable with.

And we decided we should get out.

And there was a neighbor family next to my folks that uh... Had three boys and the mother and father.

And there was a lady across, they lived on a small cul-de-sac with four houses.

There was a lady across that was left there too.

And... we tried to walk out and the water was coming up too fast to get walked out.

So we decided we'd go to the highest house, which was uh... the lady across the... cul-de-sac.

And we got in the house and... we were waiting for a rescue or whatever.

I don't know.

But anyway, the water kept coming up and up.

And when the refrigerator started floating in the kitchen, we found a way to get into the attic.

And we got up into the attic of the house.

The water was coming up in three or four foot... increments at a time.

It wasn't just a steady, slow rise.

So... eventually the house started shifting off the foundation and started breaking apart.

And we were all in the attic at that time.

And the roof broke apart.

And... to be honest with you, I don't know what happened with everybody else.

I got out through the fracture in the roof.

I got out of the house and I got carried by the water down to the... lake shore.

And I got hung up in a tree.

And so I stayed in the tree until the tree next to me, tipped over.

And the lightning was flashing bright enough that night, that it just lit everything up like daylight when it did flash.

And I... in one of the flashes of lightning, there was a big inner tube come floating by and I made a jump for it.

Cause I figured, "Well my tree's next.

If that tree went."

And I missed it.

And I got out in the lake and I was swimming to the shore and I'm guessing I was maybe 20 to 25 feet off shore.

And... the dam broke.

- [Narrator] The Canyon Lake Dam holds back Rapid Creek on the city's West side.

Stream gauges above the lake record a rise of 13 feet in four hours.

At about 10:45 PM the Canyon Lake Dam ruptures, Dave Baumberger is in the lake, when it happens.

- [Dave] I knew because the way the water went.

The water just started rushing out.

I mean, immediately.

So I went down and through where the dam was in the spillway.

And...

I don't know.

I was swimming, but I was, I didn't know if I was swimming up or down.

Half the time, to be honest with you.

And... after that, I just started bouncing off stuff, going down downstream.

And I wound up down close to where the mortuary is on Jackson Boulevard.

- [Narrator] About a mile downstream of the dam, pastor Ron Masters and his wife LaVonne are preparing to evacuate with their five children.

Including their oldest daughter, Karen.

- Well when we decided to leave, there was water gushing downstairs.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- [Karen] Don't you remember that?

- [Ron] Right.

- [LaVonne] Yeah.

- [Ron] It was coming into our basement and we had a Mercury and then we had a 65 International four wheel drive, and I said, "Let's take the four wheel drive."

So we got out and got in it and then came across the, just across the bridge and the current caught us, if we'd have had another, - The first wall of water came.

- If we'd have had another... 15 seconds.

- Yeah.

- Or less we'd have been ahead of it.

But the first wall of water caught us and swept us right across, over here in the trees, right over there.

- [Karen] The picture doesn't show it real well, but we were kind of backed up against three trees.

- [Ron] Yes.

The back bumper.

- [Karen] That's why I think... - [Ron] the tree... - [Karen] That's why I think we didn't get... - [Ron] But that tree held it.

It was about, that much of the back bumper that kept us forced between these two trees.

- You know what's interesting though.

I just wanna say, in our vehicle, there was peace.

We all... were telling each other that we loved each other.

And we all thought we were gonna be in heaven together was what we thought, because we thought there was no way to get out.

And then dad just felt really prompted to move and, and get some of us out.

- Because I had in the vehicle, I had my nose to the ceiling already.

And I said to God, I said, "God, are you threw really through with me, is this time for me to come home?"

- And it was about then that Jonathan or Steven, our oldest son said to his dad, he said, "Dad this is all in God's hands.

- And that's the last word we heard him say.

- And then Jonathan said to me, he said, "I just love you so much."

- Oh, he came up and hugged your neck.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

And I uh... that's when I, when I said, "God, are you through with me?"

That's when I just started acting without thinking, I... it was just like, everything was automatic then.

That's when I let my legs float up over LaVonne and kicked the window on the opposite side where I was sitting and then was able to get out through that, reached out and pulled her out and then reached in for Karen.

- [Narrator] While Ron is pulling 14 year old Karen out of the vehicle.

The raging current sweeps two year old Timothy away.

- And that was because I was holding him when I got pulled out.

- And he was just two.

- So he was two and a half.

- Yeah.

- He was my buddy.

We were buds.

- Yeah.

And I lost him.

- [Narrator] Water covers their car, Ron, LaVonne and Karen struggle to survive in the roiling debris filled current.

They fear the other children, Joanne, Stephen and Jonathan have not survived.

- Once I got out of the vehicle.

- Yep.

I had LaVonne where I held onto her with one arm like this from about 10:30 at night, till four o'clock in the morning.

Just hung on.

- [LaVonne] And I had a hold of... - [Ron] She had a hold... - [LaVonne] Branch... - [Ron] Branch of the... - [LaVonne] Up above my head tree and she said to me several times in the night, "Honey, just let me go."

And I said, "I'm not gonna let you go."

And it was, - I was getting so tired.

oh, miraculous the way I could hang on to her.

And Karen was like, right where she is now, she was hanging on.

- I climbed a little tree that was there.

- She found a little tree was being protected by one of these big ones.

And it, so the water kind of swirled around her this way.

- [Narrator] Rapid Creek continues its swollen rampage.

Knocking out electrical power and throwing flood victims into darkness.

Tom Haggerty is in bed at his parents' home.

- [Tom] My dad started yelling for me at like one in the morning, got me out bed.

And uh... we lived on Lanark Road which is about a not a full block from where the main force of the water came through.

And the water was hitting the front of our house.

And it was, there was so much pressure that it was raising our garage doors.

So my dad had me come out and help him tie down the garage doors.

When we opened the ground level door from the garage about a foot and a half of water came falling into the house.

Anyway we closed up the garage doors.

There was not any light.

I mean you know, if you've been in a cave and you know what it's like when they turn off the lights, that's what it was like that night.

Except there was this, this huge sound of water rushing.

And I mean it was just like this roar.

And we went out on our back porch since the water was going around both sides of our house.

And it was probably a couple feet deep.

And so we were on our back porch and in our backyard is a pond, it's still there today.

Well the water was running straight back down behind our house.

And it was very eerie because you could hear people screaming for help as they floated by.

But I couldn't see... you.

I mean it was so dark.

It was, you couldn't see anything past the length of your arm.

Occasionally there'd be lightning strikes, but even that you couldn't see cause the clouds were so thick.

And uh...

Anyway I sat there with, stood there with my dad and my neighbor Fuzz Ewing and talking about what could we do to help these people that we had heard screaming floating past and we didn't have a rope.

We couldn't see anything.

It would've been suicide to try to go down and you'd never found the people, anyway.

So it was just a horrible situation.

- [Narrator] Just west of downtown, surging floodwater from Rapid Creek rises around a car filled with six teenagers.

They pull into a parking lot near the multi-story Rushmore building, looking for protection.

- As soon as we stop the car behind Payless shoe store, Kay just instantly jumps outta the car and takes off running to the Rushmore building.

And there was fire escape ladders in the back.

- And I just ran you know, I saw the fire escape and it was like, "Well that's off the ground, fire escape it's safe."

- And she made it and I said, "Let's go!

And just literally in seconds, the water's up to my knees and stuff.

And the current is so strong.

We couldn't make it.

- So I got over here and got up there.

Well then I was hollering at em', you know and, but it was getting loud by then.

And um...

I uh you know, said... was motioning and hollering you know, "Come over!"

You know, "Come over here."

And uh... Ed.

The other gentleman that had gotten in the car with Gayle and I, he tried to bring Gale over to me.

But by that time the water was too swift.

They couldn't get through.

So they went back over.

Were attempting to get up on top of the roof when the wall of water came.

- So we're back there, we're looking for a tree or anything that we can get up on.

And then I spot some plumbing pipes coming outta the top corner of the building.

And I said, "You know I can get in my car and I'll pull it up next to the side of the building.

Then I can jump up on the roof and I can grab those pipes and I'll pull you guys all up."

Well as soon as I went over the car and opened up the car door, I looked up and the back wall of the building blew out.

- [Narrator] Ed Healy and Gayle Nemeti are standing near the wall when it blows out, their bodies are found later.

- I saw the wall come down, you know wash out and take, Ed and Gayle where... he was trying to help her up there.

And um...

I saw them and um... shoe boxes, the inside of the building, you know?

And so then I ran up.

That's when, that's when I ran from here up to the next one, cause I couldn't get in this door.

So I ran up to the next one and that door was open.

- The car shot straight back into a tree.

I was hanging onto the car door.

And then I see Randy and John are on the back bumper still hanging on.

So I work my way back to them and as we're hanging on to the bumper, well the water just keeps increasing and it's shooting over the roof of the car and it's like being underneath a waterfall.

It was drowning us.

And we looked at each other and we said, "I hope to see you again tomorrow."

And we all just let go and took off.

- [Narrator] Arlene Mattis is in a vehicle with her husband Jack, her sister Millie Raywalt and Millie's husband, Gene.

They reach the center of town and encounter high water.

Their car stalls.

So they get in with another man who's driving by.

- He got us all up there and there was a rack on top of the car and we all five got up there and floated on that car until a little roof came by.

Cause there was some kind of, a little camping thing I think was at that intersection at the time.

And... so we got on this roof when that roof came by, we five got on this roof.

And then we floated a while on there and a bigger roof come by and we all stepped across and got on there.

Because we were a little higher up from the water.

And we were on there for a while and all the while these, these um... gas tank things were going by and fire, and logs, and then about that time kind of a... little smaller house came and it came by us so we all got on there and about the time we all got on there, it split.

And my husband just got over with us.

We were all on there.

And when it's where he split, he just stepped across.

And half of it went down the crick and then we kept going on down.

We were not too far from Omaha heading East on this house.

And then a bigger house came.

It was a little bigger.

So we all crawled up on that house.

And then... we floated on that for a while and then a bigger house came and we all got on that bigger house.

And then this house was big enough that it went down about well, Rice Cycle was across the street.

We were about right, where Rice Cycle was on the other side of Omaha and it, this house wedged up against a tree and uh... there was two big trees I think.

And then there was a trailer house that was kind of wedged.

And our house caught there.

And that's where it stayed.

- [Narrator] Denny Bohls is at A and B Welding Supply playing cards with coworkers.

They plan to spend the night protecting the store's merchandise from high water.

- [Denny] We heard a knock at the back door and went to back door to see who it was.

It happened to be one of our employees wives.

And she says, "Well..." He to be in Sioux Falls.

On the way back from Sioux Falls with a transport.

And she said, "Well tell Joe that we're gonna go to the church.

The police just told us to evacuate."

So we were by the back door of the building, which was on the North side.

And we looked out at the pickup she was driving and the pickup was already starting to float.

And she had her two girls in the pickup.

So myself and the other employee ran out and we got the girls out of the pickup, headed back to the store.

And before, when we got back to the store, we turned around and looked and the pickup was floating away already.

(camera snapping) And then we saw our neighbors, which was right to the South of the building.

They were walking, they were trying to across New York street and they couldn't get across.

So we let 'em in the building.

And we no more got in the building, we heard something crack and it turned around and looked and the cinder block building which was on the West side of the building cracked.

And it started coming in.

So we headed to the East, the front of the building, which was on the East side to get it out.

And we got to the front of the building and we couldn't get the door open because there was so much pressure on the, on the building itself.

So my boss Harold, kicked the glass out and he went out and the neighbors went out.

A man, woman and their son.

And then um... And then that's, they just went in the dark we just lost them.

That's when we, that's when we got pushed up in the corner and climbed up in the counter and stayed there all night long and the water was coming up inside the building, getting deeper and deeper and I kicked the plate glass window out, the front window out to let the water release and let it run through.

And uh... we sat on that, or stood on that, that counter... should I say.

And I had one of the girls and the other employee had the other girl, and that was midnight.

And we watched houses floating by with people with flashlights and people hollering.

And you can see the flashlights in the upper windows.

These were two story houses.

We see propane tanks floating by with a fire shooting out of them.

The National Guard was here.

Uh...

They were following the crick down and they were shooting their flares so everything had an orange glow.

(mournful orchestral music) - [Narrator] Dolores Allen flees to hire ground with her husband and nephew before the flood surge comes.

But she can't convince her mother and others to leave a house near the creek.

- [Delores] While we was walking away from the house, it was raining.

And it was like, people were like being poured on, buckets of water were being poured on us, but we wrapped up by nephew in some plastic.

And so that was really a huge downpour.

And then my mother, I guess she looked out the window and she seen waves coming.

She saying like "Hawaii Five-O."

So she said, "She's right.

We better get outta here."

And my aunt said, "No I'm gonna stay.

You know where its warm."

And my mother and my cousin went running towards Philadelphia Street where my mother's house is and um... they reached it and she could hear a thud.

And she knew my, my cousin got, she hit a tree.

Of course she died.

And then my mother hung onto the porch up to the ceiling, you know the rafter, she hung there.

She said, "She had to grab onto something."

But she was saying she was praying and asking for her to let, or she let me live.

I've got grandchildren and stuff like that.

And she was up there, but you know, the water was still coming up.

So she heard, or the neighbor, her neighbor crying, crying out for help.

And uh... finally that the rescue boat came by and seeing them and picks them up.

Yeah.

But my cousin was gone.

- [Narrator] As the water begins to recede after a night of terror.

Survivors take stock of the situation.

Local veterinarian Keith Johnson, joins friends to look for people in need of help.

- [Keith] Stan Lieberman showed up with a boat right here on the West side of Bennet Clarkson Hospital and Bill Groethe was there so the three of us were in his boat and thought we'd do what we could to find some survivors.

So basically that's got us to this point where, uh... we did see this Matthew Vanderbeek.

- [Narrator] Matthew Vanderbeek is 14 years old.

His father, mother, and brother have died in the flood, leaving him as the family's soul survivor.

- [Keith] Hanging in a tree, shivering and shaking and worried about his family more than anything else.

But they, his family got into a boat and the family perished.

But uh... the house stayed intact if they'd stayed with the house.

This is the upper branches and sure he went by various trees trying... to find his, to get outta the water.

But uh... he managed to get, get up in that tree and was hanging on.

- [Narrator] Robby Corner takes shelter for the night, with others in a house high above the creek, hoping his mother has survived.

The flood surrounded her home.

- First light, my friends and I, we walked outta the house and down to the edge of the highway and looked over.

And we could see that uh... if you get rid of that carport, basically what we were looking at from up there was what you're looking at right here.

There is just not a single board left of the house.

Um... And so, you know, we really didn't know what happened to anybody.

Strangely enough, that house never got hit.

And so what happened was it kicked a wall out, um... but the house remained there.

And uh...

So again, the speculation is that nothing floated down and hit it, but I'm sure where this house was located here, there was a lot of houses coming down, hitting you know, one house hitting another house and so on and so forth and everything getting knocked off its foundation.

Um...

So, I had a neighbor that was renting a house right over here at the time.

And he was, he had walked out here from town to see what was going on with his place.

And so... we said, "Well let's walk into Rapid City and see what's going on and see if you know, we can get to a telephone or something to let... my sister know, try to let my sister know what was my situation and my relatives that lived here in Rapid.

Um...

So we walked into town and it was, you know, it was just a nightmare.

There was fish laying all over the highway from Canyon Lake and the creek.

So one of the friends I was with was Steve Mills.

And so we walked over to his house.

He lives near Steven's High School, and it was up you know, away from any flooding or anything.

And the telephones worked and so forth.

So I called up to my uncle's house up on Frontier drive.

And I told him, I said, "Here's where I am.

And do you know what's going on with my sister?"

And they had heard from her and she was alive.

Um... And so, but I couldn't, I hadn't heard anything about my mother.

Well probably about, I dunno, 4 or 5:00 PM that day um... my uncle's neighbor from up on Frontier drive came over to Mill's house.

Cause he knew where we were to pick me up and take me up to my aunt and uncles.

And he said you know, "They found your mom a little bit earlier and she'd washed a number of miles down the creek.

They found her body.

- [Narrator] Dave Baumberger is about two miles downstream.

The house he's in breaks apart sending nine people into the water.

- [Dave] I got out at the mainstream and off to the side and there was a pickup stranded with a family in it.

And...

I couldn't pull myself into the back end of the pickup.

They were in the box.

And...

I finally, they got me drug in over the side somehow or another.

And so until the water receded, we stayed in the back end of that pickup.

It was me and one of the, one of the boys from the family that survived that night and seven died.

- [Narrator] Ron and LaVonne Masters and their daughter Karen hold onto trees in the water all night after their car is submerged.

They've seen two year old Timothy swept away by the current.

They fear the same has happened to their other children, Steven, Joanne and Jonathan.

- I heard a voice under my feet.

I couldn't believe I heard a voice.

And so I laid my cheek in the water and I spoke up to the window and I said "Who is it?

Who is it?"

And Joanne, was how old at that time?

- She was eight.

- She was eight.

- Eight.

Came floating right across - I thought she was 10.

- She was 10. and came right up... - She was 10, Ron.

- And looked in my eyes.

- She was 10.

- She was 10.

- I'll never forget the look in her eyes like... - Cause she thought she was the only one left.

- Cause her two brothers had died beside her.

- They had suffocated, - They had suffocated.

The funeral director told us there was no water in their lungs at all.

- My sister actually had to move them when they died.

So she has her own story to tell, but she had to move them aside.

- But she tried to talk to them.

- They talked for a while - But they didn't answer.

- Yeah they talked for awhile and then they didn't answer back.

But one of them was sitting.

I don't know that scout had a, had seats on the side.

And one was sitting there, she actually had to move him so that she could keep her feet.

Cause she was in a wall of water or the water was like up to here to her and she just had her head up at the ceiling.

- And that's the way - And there wasn't enough air... - She lived more many hours.

Well there wasn't enough air for three of them to survive.

- No.

- There was only enough air for one - For one.

Our little two year old son that had floated all the way through Rapid City and was found clear out where the Open Bible church is now.

Do you know where it is out East?

He was caught up in a tree up there.

And the only way he was identifiable was his little Minnesota Twins jacket that LaVonne had put on him before we went to left off.

- [LaVonne] I don't think you ever get over it.

Ever, ever, ever.

Because they're part of you and to lose a child is probably the most traumatic of any death.

- [Narrator] Tom Haggerty listens helplessly through the night to screaming in his neighborhood.

In the morning he walks to his father's business.

Haggerty's department store near the creek in central Rapid City.

- [Tom] Basically our store was that size, not quite as wide, but the entire front of that building was glass panels.

So it was a huge glass front on that's where, and all the glass was gone.

And the parking lot of course was full of mud.

It was full of broken fixtures from the store.

When I walked through the front, which used to be, you know a wall of windows, there was about... two to three feet of mud in the store and everything was gone.

I mean it was a 40,000 square foot store and there was no merchandise left visible except what happened to be mounted up on the walls above about a five, six foot level.

There's still some product hanging up there.

But everything else was just, mud.

And uh... my dad and his main employees were standing in front of the store and just kind of this helpless look on their face.

Like what do we do?

- [Narrator] Kay Schriever escapes rising flood water and runs up a fire escape into the multi-story Rushmore building just West of downtown Rapid City.

- I ran literally ran into because it was dark.

Couldn't see anything.

I just felt my way down the hall.

And I ran into some people and um... it was, the people that were from the radio station that was here.

And they had move it up to that floor.

Or maybe they were on that floor.

I don't know, cause I'd never been in the building or anything.

And um... there was I know at least one lady cause she was, trying to comfort me.

I told her that my friends were out here, you know, help.

You know, my friends were out here and everything.

And I don't remember if she came with me or not.

But like I said, I went in and out a few times.

- [Narrator] Five teens with Kay Schriever are trapped by the flood.

Ed Healy and Gayle Nemeti die when the wall of a nearby store blows out.

The other three, Mike Faust, Randy Shacklett and John Dengis are swept downstream.

- But I lucked out and I shot down almost to, I went down basically about where Founders park is right now.

And the current starts pulling me back into the stream.

Well I managed to grab one of those big Oak trees there and I was hanging on for dear life.

And literally this is the truth.

The current was so strong.

I had slip on boots, like beetle boots or something and the water completely stripped me from the waist down.

So when they found me the next day, I was basically naked from the waist down, but my t-shirt had stretched down so much.

It was down to my knees.

So it was like a dress.

John was swept all the way down to buy where the packing plant bridge is down there.

And he was caught up in the bridge and debris.

And somebody he told me, threw him a rope, but he couldn't pull 'em out because of the current and the debris and stuff.

So he literally said this guy hooked this rope up to a car or truck or something and pulled him through.

- [Narrator] Randy Shacklett's body was found later, farther downstream.

Among the six teens in Mike Faust's car on the night of the flood, three died and three lived.

Arlene Mattis spends the night moving from one piece of floating debris to another.

She ends up on a floating house that wedges against some trees surrounded by the flood.

- [Arlene] And then my husband said, "Well."

He looked and he saw there was an attic window right below.

And he knocked that out and we all crawled in there.

So it was warmer.

And so that's where we spent the rest of the night then.

And then I don't know what time it was, but I stayed real close to the window and I would holler, you know, "Help," every once in a while.

And every time I hollered help, you could hear help all the way down, far away you know, people wanting help.

And we stayed there until, oh I don't know if it was getting light.

I think it was still pretty dark.

And we heard a boat.

Somebody was coming with a boat and they went by and we hollered at 'em and they said, well that they would, just stay here.

We'll be back.

And then they came back and got us.

- [Narrator] Denny Bohls spends the night standing on a display counter in the flooded A and B Welding supply store where he works.

Denny and a coworker helped rescue a woman and her two daughters.

They spend the night in the flooded store and all survive.

- Pretty much, pretty much had destroyed our building.

We only had one standing wall.

All the merchandise inside was lost.

A lot of that the next day after we, after I got home.

I had cut my finger pretty bad.

My thumb that is, I got home and got cleaned up and got something to eat.

And got a ride back down here.

We started looking for the owner of the company, Harold Elliott, cause he was missing.

And we didn't find him at all.

We did see the neighbors that we had let in.

We saw them the next day, they were okay.

But Harold had lost his life in flood.

(mournful piano music) - [Narrator] In 1972, there are two hospitals in Rapid City.

One of them Bennett Clarkson is flooded.

For several days hundreds of injured people are brought to St. John's McNamara.

Sharon Weber is a nurse and the manager of the emergency department.

- At the emergency entrance there was a big canopy across that connected over to the nursing home, nurses home.

And... one of the doctors and a nurse was assigned to be out there on triage and tell 'em whether to come into the ER or where to go you know.

Whether to go across the street, where they were keeping people in.

If they were deceased, the doctor checked them and told them to go, which morgue to go to, And that.

And it was a foggy dreary spooky night.

It was just a...

I still have that eerie feeling from that night.

But then we worked and we worked and were worked on people.

A lot of kids came in that needed tetanus shots and we sewed up lots of lacerations.

Some were in their night clothes and uh... some their clothes were muddy and wet and just I...

I can still see the faces of some of those just scared to death.

- [Narrator] Ozzie Osheim works at the flooded Catron Funeral home.

He goes to help the morning after the flood at the Campbell Paula funeral home.

- [Ozzie] Well it was chaos.

You can imagine.

Now in the course of a normal year, the three funeral homes in town at that time would probably handle plus or minus around 300 funeral homes, excuse me, 300 funerals between the three firms.

Now overnight, or say from day one until the body, last body was found, you had 238 cases.

There were only 11 licensed funeral directors on staff at the three funeral homes.

And fortunately the funeral profession responded beautifully within the next number of days.

We had approximately 55 funeral directors from five, from Rapid City, the Black Hills region, the state of South Dakota, and about a five state region, about 55 funeral directors came in and volunteered their time to assist us.

- [Narrator] Within a couple of days.

The Catron funeral home where Ozzie Osheim works is back and running and receiving bodies.

- [Ozzie] Obviously there weren't enough tables in which to place everyone up off the ground.

So we neatly put sheeting and blanketing on the floor.

And as a body was prepared that had brought to the building and brought downstairs was properly cleaned.

Bathed, embalmed.

Then the body was placed on the unidentified section of the garage.

When the public came to identify their loved one, we had nurses on duty.

We had clergy on duty to help those who might need medical help, the help those who needed... physical support.

But the families would be taken into the garage.

One family at a time, usually just one or two of the family members would come in with us.

A staff member would go with them.

If the body was identified, it was properly marked, and placed in the identified section.

- Kay Schriever is asked to identify the body of her friend Gayle Nemeti.

- [Kay] And um... she was... on the floor in the garage.

And it was her.

But... she wasn't all messed up or anything.

I was so thankful.

I just saw like... bruises on the side of her face.

And you know, she was a muddy mess, but... she was all there.

And so I just thought, felt to my heart that, I hope she didn't suffer a lot.

(mournful orchestral music) - The three funeral homes realized very shortly that they couldn't, it was going to be almost impossible to have a full funeral service for each and every family.

So the three funeral homes sat down with the ministerial associations that were here in town at the time.

And it decided that they would offer graveside services only.

Not full services with a church service or a service in the chapel.

Most families were content with that plan.

Once one of us had sat down with the family, took care of, we would take care of all the paperwork for the death certificates and all the legal data.

We would schedule a time for the service.

And then in cooperation with the cemeteries, one certain funeral home would schedule their services on the hour.

The second funeral home would schedule their services on the quarter hour.

And the third funeral home would schedule their services on the half hour.

So that we were all jammed together at the same time, trying to... Made it easier for the cemeteries to accommodate everyone.

- [Narrator] Some of the bodies are not easily identified.

Dentists, including Gerry Harms use dental records to make identifications.

- When people drowned, they bloat.

And you cannot recognize them.

So uh...

I took care of a lot of the people down there.

One of my best friends was down there.

He and his wife and son drowned that night.

But anyway, I got all my dental records out, cause that's the only way you can find out specifically who people are.

And so uh... they had a 18 wheel trailer there at the morgue.

They kept bringing people in and you know, if I thought I knew something about who they were or whatever, then I'd get their records out.

And uh... it was just a terrible ordeal.

- [Narrator] James Whitehead flies a National Guard helicopter into the wreckage, retrieving bodies.

- That's the only way we could, we could get into some of these places, you know.

Especially down by Baken Park.

That was a, that was really a lot of mess down there.

And uh... people wrapped around trees and of course all the... bushes and brush and limbs and stuff was piled around em'.

I mean you just, you literally had to pull 'em out of there.

You know because they're, entangled in there so much.

And I remember this one 18 year old girl, I'm sure she was about 18 years old.

She had her leg completely tore off and uh... it was, it was bad.

You couldn't even imagine what it looked like.

You couldn't even imagine.

I mean it looked like...

The... World War II when they bombed in series, you know, and all the destruction.

- [Narrator] City workers spend the days after the flood, repairing badly damaged utilities, they look for survivors and count the dead.

Two days after the flood, Mayor Don Barnett calls a meeting of the city council.

- We got the council together in a small room in the courthouse.

It had one little light bulb on the wire and we were sitting around the table, but the reporters weren't there yet.

I had told him about the meeting and you just can't have meetings in South Dakota without the reporters in attendance.

And they were on the way, but we got to talking to this federal employee and he wanted to bring the muscle of the federal government in and repair about 700 mobile home pads.

They had been located in mobile home camps or parks they called them.

But they had, they were all damaged.

They were undercut with water and mud and crap and sewer lines were broken.

Water lines were broken.

The power was out.

The telephone poles were on the ground.

It was just like war.

And so he said, "I need authority from the council to use federal money, to repair those 700 mobile home site locations."

Leonard Swanson had been with the city since 1947 and he was public works director.

He said, "No!"

Just real sharp like that.

And he said, "The council and the city cannot permit the reoccupation of the flood plain, because that would endanger so many lives."

And he said, "We should never sentence, Like a judge was sentenced you to the gallows?

We should never sentence the flood survivors to one more night on the suicidal flood plain.

And Kay was there, my administrative assistant and she wrote that down and then I repeated it and then she repeated it and Swanee broke down in tears.

And Dr. Lytle was president of the city council and deputy mayor.

And he said, "I think Swanee's right!

We should not permit the federals to repair those mobile home parks.

Maybe nobody should repair their homes near the creek.

So he made a motion and low and behold, all 10 councilmen adopted that policy.

We did not buy all of the land near the creek, but we certainly purchased all of the residential land by the creek and then had a relocation program when the HUD people out of Denver granted Rapid City 48,000,000.

And we used that to buy, the places where 1500 families had lived.

And we converted that to an open space park.

That's five miles long and five blocks wide all the way through town.

Now when we have high water again in Rapid City, those parks will be damaged.

But they won't be damaged to the tune of 700 destroyed mobile homes and over a thousand wooden homes, because now it's golf course about 18 miles of hiking trails and biking trails and soccer fields and so many recreational things.

And that flood plain park makes Rapid City one of the most beautiful cities in America.

But with all this growth in Rapid City now, they're growing East, West, North, and South.

My God they're gonna pull Rapid City into Mead county here before long and clear to the air base.

Box Elder was a mobile home park when I was mayor and now is an American South Dakota city.

And all of that growth will turn around and put pressure on the council to again reoccupy the beautiful flood plain with residential housing of all varieties.

And as long as I'm alive, I'll be at those public hearings to remind the people about the stupidity of the planning and the zoning and the bad land use patterns that were in place at 5:00 on June 9th in the evening hours.

Because by 5:00 AM they weren't there anymore.

(gentle guitar music) ♪ You were 72 on June the 9th ♪ ♪ When the rain that fell ♪ ♪ Made the water rise ♪ ♪ Canyon Lake lost its dam that night ♪ ♪ And took all of it higher ♪ ♪ They found him on Jackson Boulevard ♪ ♪ Ankle deep in their own front yard ♪ ♪ They prayed to God ♪ ♪ Their car could start ♪ ♪ And they went for higher ground ♪ ♪ If I ever learned ♪ ♪ a thing from my father ♪ ♪ Its to never fear ♪ ♪ Hell or high water ♪ ♪ Even when there's problems all around ♪ ♪ You just look ♪ ♪ for the higher ground ♪ (gentle guitar music) ♪ I remember the lies ♪ ♪ that people swore ♪ ♪ turning from love ♪ ♪ to brandish their swords ♪ ♪ I remember you stood ♪ ♪ without saying a word, ♪ ♪ Hey you took the higher ground ♪ ♪ Cause if I ever learned ♪ ♪ a thing from my father ♪ ♪ It's never fear ♪ ♪ Hell or high water ♪ ♪ Cause even when ♪ ♪ there's problems all around ♪ ♪ You just look ♪ ♪ for the higher ground ♪ (gentle guitar music fades)