Ross Shirley Home - Teton Flood Disaster

This is a visual story of our family homestead and the effects of the Teton Dam Disaster on June 5, 1976. This is the view of the house from the northwest looking toward the south east with Sugar City in the background. The flood came from the left. It caved in the east side of Dad’s shed and took out the doors on the west as the waters went down. This is the back side of the house showing all the fence posts laid flat. Water was still running by, which proved to be a great help in cleaning up.

This is the view a little more down the same road to the south, looking toward the northeast where the flood came from. It shows Dad’s shed.

This is the view of the house from the corner, showing approximately where the flood victim’s body was discovered.

The waves in the water were either the current, or the waves caused from the wind.

This is another view moving around the corner to the east. Again, this is the general area where the deceased victim was found.

The ditch and the bushes created a gathering place for many mailboxes. Dad found a rocking chair high in a tree in Wilford and retrieved it. He gave it to me (Scott) and I still have it.

This shows Dad and several of the family after they had shoveled the mud out of the house and hung the carpets out to dry.

This is Dad cleaning out his house. The carpet was from the front room. While many people stood in front of their homes crying, Dad was busy working.

This is the view from the helicopter as the family carried out the deceased victim. It says, “A family in Sugar City, Idaho, cleans up the home and yard as volunteers remove a flood victim’s body from the water. The Teton Dam which broke Saturday, flooding several Idaho towns, caused damage in the millions of dollars.” It should be noted the family was the volunteer group.

This picture was taken a bit further to the east, showing the leaning power poles on the west side of the house.

The trees on the east side of the house did much to protect the home from the big push of water, which was about five feet deep. They also collected a huge amount of additional debris.

Perhaps these trees kept the house from being flattened, who knows? This is another view of the east side of the house.

This is a bit further to the east of the house looking back to the northwest.

Still further to the east, looking back at the house and metal building.

Someone’s combine was deposited a little to the west of the house. It may have been Dalling’s. The field to the east of the house was full of water for several days.

The house was soon cleaned up. A bus full of Mennonites from Canada stopped by to ask if Dad wanted help. He put them to work. We were told from our Stake President not to turn volunteers away. We were told, “You will be held accountable for blessings others would have received, had they been allowed to help.” Later, it was determined the house could not be saved. Dad's name was painted on the front for the demolition team. There were too many structural problems. All the effort was not wasted, it only brought us closer together.

A H.U.D. hut was moved in just behind the house. Notice how everything was cleaned up and hauled away. We saw many truckloads of dead horses and cows being trucked away. Neal and Dad salvaged a lot of the brick, windows, and other building materials from the condemned house. After so many wonderful years of service, the day came for the home to be demolished. A home is more than bricks, mortar, and boards. It is the sum total of the people who lived and loved inside. Home is where the heart is. Our home is forever.

Janet Shirley Howell's Flood Story

The day the Teton dam broke, Ard and I had gone to Lagoon Amusement Park. We were totally unaware that the dam had broken until we got back to Salt Lake and got word from Stretch. Mom and dad were in Salt Lake for Chris’s baby blessing. I remember we went to church at Stretch’s ward long enough for Chris to be blessed, then we all got up and left to head for Idaho. If I remember right, we traveled up to Idaho in a three-car caravan, with mom and dad leading the way. We had to detour east up through Lava Hot Springs, Victor, Driggs and almost to Ashton because of road closures resulting from the flood waters before we could get down to Neal and Cathie’s place to spend the night.








The next morning we got up and headed down to mom and dad’s place. We had to walk in from the north until we got to their place. I was shocked at the devastation. Railroad tracks were ripped up and standing on their sides like a picket fence, trees had been flattened, fences were swept away. Mom and dad had a big steel building in their backyard and the east side of it was caved in and the door on the west was pretty much ripped off.





Mom and dad had a parrot named Mrs. Bird that Neal and Stretch had sent home from their missions in Brazil. How that bird survived the flood, I’ll never know, other than she was in a cage high enough that the water didn’t reach her. If memory serves me, Scott had waded in earlier in the day and retrieved her and taken her to a safe place.

When we went in the house there was a water line in the living room showing how deep water had gotten inside. There was mud and straw from the neighbor’s barnyard inside the house.
We all went to work trying to salvage what we could. We shoveled mud until the guys were able to rip the carpet up from the floor and haul it outside. (Notice the water line on the TV, also Jenna's baby picture is on top of the TV. This was where Scott had written in the mud the day before, "Scott was here, I have the parrot.")

Sometime mid-morning, I remember the guys coming inside the house to tell the womenfolk not to look out the kitchen window to the west. Well, of course, the first thing we did was go look out the window. Some poor man had drowned in the flood and his body was just below the surface of the water near the garden. Somehow word was transmitted to the authorities and a helicopter was dispatched to transport the victim. I remember the guys struggling through the mud, carrying the man out to the road where he could be picked up. (The photo at left came out in a Utah paper. It was recognized by Stretch's mother-in-law, who saved it for us. It shows the men carrying the victim.)








I remember Mom cobbling lunch together and we sat out in the front yard on kitchen chairs eating our lunch. (The photo at left shows everyone eating lunch on kitchen chairs lined up on the sidewalk in about six inches of water. Dad is sitting in the recliner at the end of the sidewalk. This was shortly before the victim was retrieved.)







(The photo at left shows the refrigerator which had tipped over on its back during the flood. Mom had opened the door, which had been water-tight, and made sandwiches out of what was left inside. What resourcefulness!)

We then went back to work until it was getting dark, then waded back out to Neal and Cathie’s place. Not a soul complained about the hard work, but our work pales in comparison to mom and dad’s courage when facing the destruction of their home and valuables. How they kept their composure, I’ll never know. Material things can be replaced, but so many photos, keepsakes and other things were ruined.

There were many stories that circulated after the flood, but one of the funny ones was about Pig Evans, a man who lived near Sugar City. The story was that when the flood warning went out, he rounded his pigs up into his trailer house and when the flood hit, they floated away together. Truth or fiction, I don’t know.


At some point following the flood, the government brought in trailers for the people who had lost their homes in the flood. Mom and dad moved into one of these trailers. It was nicknamed "The HUD Hut." When the road alongside mom and dad’s place became passable, it turned into a thoroughfare and the dust from that road was unbelievable. Mom and dad lived in the Hud Hut until their new home was completed in the Wilford area.

(The first photo below shows the HUD Hut which was provided by the government after the flood. Notice how well things had been cleaned up. The photo below shows the ever-present dust the filled the skies during the following months.)