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Rapid City Story
Wed Aug 24, 2005
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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