“We were there an hour to an hour and a half. These injured needed hospital care, and there were no plans, as yet, to get them out. They couldn’t travel by boat. So we got in our boat and went back to West Yellowstone to arrange for the injured to get from there to Bozeman and to the hospital when the helicopters did arrive.” [Illustration: Slide victim Ray Painter, 46, of Odgen, Utah is carried by volunteers from helicopter to evacuation plane at West Yellowstone airstrip. (Wide World)] [Illustration: Reporters, photographers, and doctors all giving attention to quake victims, resting on bales of hay at West Yellowstone Airport hangar shed. (Salt Lake Tribune)] Shortly after noon, the first helicopter, a two-rotor silver Air Force H-21 from Hill Air Force Base, Utah, took its first load of four injured from the dam. At West Yellowstone Airport, as arranged by Dr. Bayles, these injured—in sleeping bags—were immediately loaded onto the floor of a converted B18, which had brought cargo to “West,” and flown to Bozeman. There Dr. Bayles had organized a fleet of station wagons to rush them to the hospital for the care that was to save most of their lives. [Illustration: Associated Press reporter Robert Moore interviews victim Warren Steele of Billings at West Yellowstone Airport. (Wide World)] [Illustration: Dr. Bayles, first M.D. to reach trapped quake victims, watches as rescued are loaded off Johnson Flying Service DC-3 at Bozeman Airport.] [Illustration: Station wagons were pressed into service as ambulances, to take victims from Bozeman Airport to the hospital. (Oliver Campbell, Manhattan, Mont.)] CD WRAPUP [Illustration: Road repairs.] By 3:45 o’clock the highway department was in full action. Major road repair help was on the way to get the roads open. George Barrett at the department’s Bozeman HQ called Spike Naranche of the Naranche & Konda contracting outfit, which was building a big stretch of road in the Gallatin Valley, about forty miles north of West Yellowstone, and got their big-scale road-building equipment rolling toward West Yellowstone and the Hebgen Dam area. There was still no definite idea of the exact damage or the road blockage, but they’d begun to suspect major damage to the dam, the roads, or both. If the Highway Department couldn’t use the equipment for road repairs, the Power Company could for dam repair. Pilot Ralph Cooper took off in the Fish and Game Commission plane at 3:45 A. M. from Helena to reconnoiter the Madison area. Shortly thereafter Quinnell and Alex Stephenson took off in the Highway Department’s plane. With daybreak came the first word on just what had happened. At 6 o’clock the planes reported (CA-1) as recorded in the Highway Department’s log.