Flood Takes Deadly Toll On Guard Commander, 1 Other Killed In Copter Crash While Touring Area

The flooding in eastern Idaho claimed its first lives Thursday when an Army National Guard helicopter crashed, killing the guard’s new task force commander for flood relief and one of the other two guardsmen aboard.

Lt. Col Jim Ball said the OH-58 Kiowa went down in an open area just north of the farming community of Firth, officials said. The cause of the crash was unknown and will be investigated by a special board that will include officials from the Army Aviation Safety Center in Alabama.

While the identities of the dead guardsmen were not immediately released, Ball said the task force commander was making a reconnaissance flight on his first day in charge.

The third guardsman on board was pulled from the flaming wreckage by a woman who lives near the crash site. He was listed in serious condition with back injuries at the Idaho Falls Regional Medical Center.

“This is a real tragedy,” Gov. Phil Batt said in a statement. “These National Guardsmen died while serving their neighbors, working on flood relief efforts.”

The accident came as accelerated snow melt pushed releases from Palisades Reservoir to a record high, and already flooded downstream communities like Firth braced for the new surge of water through the Snake River.

“We think we’re going to be prepared for it, but you never know,” Bingham County disaster spokesman Rick Just said.

The Bureau of Reclamation increased the flows though Palisades Dam on the Idaho-Wyoming border to 40,000 cubic feet per second, 2,000 higher than a day earlier and 1,000 more than was flowing out of the reservoir last weekend when water swept into hundreds of homes and across thousands of acres of crop and pasture land.

But residents and volunteers in communities like Blackfoot, Thomas, Roberts and Firth used the first half of this week, when federal water managers backed off the flows, to fortify levees and emergency dikes.

Officials said they were holding so far, but the crest from the higher releases will not hit for some time.

Still Mark Croghan, a hydraulic engineer for the bureau, speculated that the new surge may not last long because inflows from the melting mountain snow pack should begin ebbing. That will permit a reduction in releases from the already full reservoir without letting it overflow.

“Compared to other years, the runoff should start decreasing any time,” Croghan said. “Once it starts dropping, it should drop fairly fast.”

And Just said flows into the Snake from tributaries below the dam seemed to be down from a week ago.

But that was about the extent of the optimism left in a state where damage from the third flood in 16 months is estimated as high as $50 million. Roads remained closed in eastern Idaho, including a stretch of Interstate 15 from Blackfoot to Shelley, and three bridges have been washed out by the rushing water.

Claine Haggard has lived on the family farm in Firth for all of his 44 years and went through the disastrous flooding after the Teton Dam broke 21 years ago. As he measures the depth of the water today by the red flag on a neighbor’s mailbox, he concedes the past week of slogging through three-foot deep water is worse.

“I never dreamed in a million years the water would have got up here,” Haggard said. “When the Teton floods came, the water was in and out of here in a day and a half. Look around now. This is a lake, and it’s going to be here for a long time.”

What he thinks was his best barley crop ever is a total loss, and all his alfalfa is still under water.

“I don’t know how I’m going to feed my cows this winter,” Haggard said.

Downstream communities in southern and western Idaho were feeling the impact from the crest of last weekend’s high releases record. It will be days before they see the effects of the second wave that has just began.

The National Weather Service had a flood warning posted for communities along 250 miles of river to the west and a flood watch on the remaining 90 miles to the Oregon border. Releases from reservoirs all along the Snake were being increased to accommodate the high flows.

Some families that evacuated last week ahead of the first wave of high water returned to their homes behind reinforced levees and dikes earlier this week, but there is still no semblance of normalcy in eastern Idaho.

Businesses providing essentials like fuel and food as well as pumpers, carpenters and masons are finding it hard to keep up with the demand. But other retailers are suffering economically, even if their businesses have remained high and dry.

Vickie Jensen has been wondering for the past week why she even opens her business, Peterson’s Furniture Co.

“Usually this time of day there are lots of cars downtown, but it’s pretty dead,” Jensen said as she looked out on Blackfoot’s main street. “I don’t know why I come here each morning because there won’t be much business. But I come anyway. It’s going to be a pretty skinny month for us.”