The first man to get word out was amateur radio operator Warren Russell, who operates station K7ICM from his trailer house in West Yellowstone, who began broadcasting news of the quake at 11:43 P. M. At 11:50, another ham, Fr. Francis A. Peterson of St. Anthony, Idaho, contacted Idaho State Police, who relayed the word to HQ in Boise, and thence to the National Warning System at Battle Creek, Michigan. At 12:25 A. M. on the first detail report from the Western Section of the Alert System it was reported that Hebgen Dam was demolished and that there were 6 feet of mud and water at the town of Ennis. [Illustration: This upside-down Cadillac and the shook-up-road between West Yellowstone and the Duck Creek Y are typical of quake damage. (Montana Highway Commission)] [Illustration: Shook-up road.] [Illustration: Several sections of road along the north shore of Hebgen Lake just slumped into the lake. (U. S. Geological Survey)] [Illustration: (Montana Highway Commission)] When the quake hit at 11:37 P. M., it woke Austin Bailey, resident maintenance man for the Montana Highway Department at Duck Creek Junction—where the road takes off along the north side of Hebgen Lake and through Madison Canyon. He noticed the light overhead jumping, furniture moved from the wall, the lights weren’t working. Realizing that such a shaking would topple rocks onto the highway, he knew that he should get out and clear the roads before the heavy tourist traffic got underway next morning. Outside everything seemed normal. He got into his own station wagon to make an initial check, started out, and 30 feet later drove over the 15 feet high scarp embankment—the main earthquake fault that had dropped off between the maintenance shed and the highway. Shaken, but not hurt, he crawled out of the car, aware that something was seriously haywire, and that he had to call for outside help. He went a mile to the nearest telephone. It was out. In the maintenance shed, where the heavy equipment and trucks are stored, he found the 16-ton rotary snowplow had been jolted eight feet out of its position the night before. The radio transmitter in his pickup either wasn’t working, or couldn’t reach the area Highway Department HQ in Bozeman. The road, when he managed to reach it, was shredded by long cracks, running along the length of the road. He loaded up his family and started north to get the word out that they needed help on the roads in the West Yellowstone area. At the Y he found an overturned Cadillac that had flipped coming over a continuation of the same scarp which ran through his own yard. Driving carefully—at times it was like straddling a grease rack—he finally found a phone that worked at Almart Lodge, 40 miles north of West Yellowstone. Highway District Engineer George Barrett logged Bailey’s call at 1:50 A. M.