Flooding surges through eastern Montana
BILLINGS, MONT. » Montana’s largest city restarted its water plant Thursday after shutting it down amid record flooding that has caused widespread damage in Yellowstone National Park and surrounding communities.
Residents in ravaged areas, meanwhile, cleaned up from the mess and braced for the economic fallout while the park remains closed at the height of tourist season.
The city of Billings had asked residents to conserve water because it was down to a limited supply when the Yellowstone River hit record high levels and triggered the closure of the treatment plant.
“We are aware yesterday’s alert to the community caused a panic. That was never our hope,” city officials said in a statement Thursday. “We have never witnessed a situation like the one we saw yesterday ... we did not know how bad it could get or how long it would continue.”
The floodwaters continued to move downstream. By this morning the flooding was expected to reach Miles City in eastern Montana. Local authorities said low-lying areas along the river could be flooded, but there was no immediate risk to the city of more than 8,000 people.
Officials had asked Billings residents Wednesday to conserve water because it was down to a 24- to 36hour supply after a combination of heavy rain and rapidly melting mountain snow raised the Yellowstone River to historic levels that forced them to shut down its water-treatment plant.
“None of us planned a 500-year flood event on the Yellowstone when we designed these facilities,” said Debi Meling, the city’s public-works director.
The city of 110,000 stopped watering parks and boulevards, and its fire department filled its trucks with river water.
Normal operations resumed Thursday after the river level began to drop. It crested Wednesday at more than foot above the previous recorded high in Billings in 1997.
The unprecedented and sudden flooding earlier this week drove all but a dozen of the more than 10,000 visitors out of the nation’s oldest park.
Remarkably, no one was reported hurt or killed by raging waters that pulled homes off their foundations and pushed a river off course, possibly permanently, and may require damaged roads to be rebuilt a safer distance away.
On Wednesday, residents in Red Lodge, Mont., a gateway town to the park’s northern end, used shovels, wheelbarrows and a pump to clear thick mud and debris from a flooded home along the banks of Rock Creek.
“We thought we had it, and then a bridge went out. And it diverted the creek, and the water started rolling in the back, broke out a basement window and started filling up my basement,” Pat Ruzich said. “And then I quit. It was like, the water won.”
While the Yellowstone flood is rare, it is the type of event that is becoming more common as the planet warms, experts said.
“We certainly know that climate change is causing more natural disasters, more fires, bigger fires and more floods and bigger floods,” said Robert Manning, a retired University of Vermont professor of environment and natural resources, “These things are going to happen, and they’re going to happen probably a lot more intensely.”
Yellowstone officials are hopeful that next week they can reopen the southern half of the park, which includes Old Faithful geyser. Park officials say the northern half of the park is likely to remain closed all summer, a devastating blow to the local economies that rely on tourism.