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Rapid City Story
Fri Aug 22, 2003
Listen in RealAudio 
Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton for The Weather Notebook. Of all natural disasters in the United States,
floods-not tornadoes or lightning- take the most lives. Today, Joshua Welsh concludes the
story of a devastating South Dakota flood three decades ago.
The 1972 Rapid City flood destroyed hundreds of homes. Some it reduced to rubble, while others
it picked up intact and moved several blocks. Retired Rapid City Police Chief Tom Hennies was
a lieutenant that night when he was forced to abandon his patrol car in 4 feet of water on one
of the city's main streets. He was stranded with only a fire truck floating nearby. Then,
Hennies was struck by a floating house and pinned under one of its eaves.
TH: The sound was unbelievable, as loud as it was, just like a freight train. And I was
scared to death. And in fact I thought I was going to drown. And in fact I would have
drowned. But as we went by the back of the fire truck, under that piece of the roof that had
caught me, somebody on the back of the fire truck grabbed me and pulled out of the water up
onto the back of that fire truck.
In the weeks that followed Hennies and his fellow policemen pulled 238 of their neighbors out
of the rubble. The dead were so many that makeshift morgues were set up in garages around the
city. The flood also took out most of the city's infrastructure, including bridges, gas
mains, and power lines.
Today a few stone foundations can still be found in the floodplain--a reminder of the
devastation wrought by the water more than 30 years ago.
Joshua Welsh reports from South Dakota. The Weather Notebook is funded by Subaru of America
and The National Science Foundation.
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