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David Mollett's Story
Fri Aug 08, 2003
Listen in RealAudio 
Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton, and this is The Weather Notebook. Today, Alaska correspondent Amy Mayer
continues her story of the 1967 Fairbanks flood with the recollections of David
Mollett.
On August 12, 1967, 17-year-old David Mollett watched as the Chena River climbed so high it
almost reached the bridge he was standing on. That evening, his family abandoned their home
and set out for higher ground. They went about a half mile.
Cut: And then this big, like, Army truck went by and it set off a big wave that washed over
the top of our car, killed the engine, and they kept going and we were just stuck then. We
were stuck out in the middle of the water. So we got out of the car and now the water is just
raging, I mean it is just coming. The water had to be four feet deep, easy. And it was moving.
It was swift.
Mollett and his parents walked to a small dry oasis to regroup. Nobody else was around, no
cars were on the road. They needed theirs.
Cut: And so we waded back out there, and it was kind of floating a little bit and we, it was
quite easy to push. So we pushed the car out, we rolled it out of the water. And blew the
water out of the carburetor again and it started and then we drove up to the university.
The family spent several weeks there. Now, David Mollett lives high in the hills above
Fairbanks.
The Weather Notebook is produced in New Hampshire by the Mount Washington Observatory, on the
web at www.mountwashington.org. We come to you through generous grants from The National
Science Foundation, and Subaru, Driven by What's Inside.
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