The quake caught Montana’s Civil Defense Director Hugh K. Potter in bed. Potter, a grizzled former Montana Highway Patrol Captain and Helena Police Commissioner, had lived through Helena’s 1935-6 earthquake. This earlier quake had logged some 3,000 recorded tremors, killed 4 people and destroyed several buildings, including Helena’s City Hall. Potter wasn’t greatly impressed by the somewhat diminished-by-distance initial shock, and went back to sleep. At 1:30 A. M., the Helena Police rousted out city fireman Ed Cottingham and reported that fragments of information about an earthquake which had caused severe damage in the state were coming in on police radio. At 1:32 Cottingham called Potter, and they went down and set up state Civil Defense HQ in Helena’s City Hall, an Arabic-style former Shriners’ building which also houses the capital city’s fire and police department. [Illustration: Standing on top the slide, with the fallen mountain as a backdrop, Civil Defense Director Hugh Potter and Madison County Sheriff Lloyd Brooks discuss problems created by the quake. (Christopherson)] For the next two hours, their life was a turbulence seething with rumors. The steep walled canyons and high mountains which obstructed normal police short wave radio added to the problem of already disrupted communications in getting information out of the quake area. Trying to piece together just what had happened, the damage, and what help was needed was like a horror movie about “THE THING,” with the exact nature of the horror emerging through the confusion and hysteria in small clues and fragments. At CD HQ, Potter realized the possibility of Hebgen Dam’s collapse, bursting, shattering, breaking in the quake. It’s an un-reinforced concrete-core earthfill dam 721 feet long, built in 1913 by the Montana Power Co. to regularize the flow of the Madison for downstream power generation. Its failure would threaten the tourists in the valley, and the sleepy 600 population town of Ennis, 65 miles below the canyon mouth. Conflicting rumors filled the air—that the dam was destroyed. By 2:00 A. M., the police and Highway Department radio frequencies were zinging with these and other unconfirmed reports leaking in about the plight of the dam and the canyon. In Helena, Potter struggled with a vision of a smaller re-enactment of the Johnstown Flood in Ennis if the dam did, or had, let go. [Illustration: (Montana Highway Commission)] FIRST PATROL