60 Stranded in Rural Montana After Flooding, Told Rescue Could Take Weeks: Then National Guard Arrives

By Amanda Thomason June 16, 2022 at 9:40am

About 60 people at East Rosebud Lake in Montana were trapped when major flooding obliterated the main access road earlier this month.

Locals, hikers and campers alike realized the morning of June 13 that they were stranded, and the situation became direr when they learned that help could be weeks away.

“They were planning on us being there like 2-4 weeks,” camper Nicole O’Shea told KTVQ-TV in Billings. “Red Lodge is a disaster. Gardiner is a disaster. Like, they’ll get to us when they get to us.”

O’Shea’s son managed to get out of the camp before the road was washed out, but by the time she’d gotten everything packed up and headed out, it was too late.

“The road was completely washed out,” Dayla Hayes, a resident of 30 years, said. “Basically, no road in, and no road out.

“We were basically pretty well prepared — we had a lot of food. My daughter used to have a book, ‘How to survive any situation.’ And I — you know, we were just sort of running through our mind what we needed, and what was missing, and what we could do.”

O’Shea shared her experience on Facebook, titling her posts “A Sleepover w/Strangers: East Rosebud Edition.”

“Woke up to no power,” she wrote. “But the care taker has a generator and wifi so we are taking turns logging in to update our families.

“Foot bridge at the bottom of the lake is gone. A considerable chunk of the road is gone. Sounds like we will be here a while.

“Walked to the outhouse. (Small miracle!) Filled every jug we could with water from a hand pump. (Amazing!) And went for a walk with a group of people I’d never met before.

“Spirits are mostly good. Lots of people outside visiting, navigating various obstacles together and trying to make the best out of everything. Lots of talk of community cookouts and rationing food to make sure everyone has enough food for … the next week??? We really have no idea when we are getting out of here.

“I’ll try to update again later tonight.”

Everyone was treating the situation like an unexpected survival test, but they banded together to formulate a plan that Tuesday morning. And during that meeting, everything changed.

“In that meeting all of a sudden we heard a helicopter,” O’Shea said. “It was so wild. I don’t even know what it’s called, but this giant sky bus — like it was huge — just dropped in the middle of camp.”

It was a Montana National Guard Chinook, and it took them to the Red Lodge airport far ahead of schedule. They were directed to the Red Cross shelter set up on the fairgrounds, where they had lunch.

“It was really emotional,” O’Shea said. “We were just overwhelmed, in a good way.”

O’Shea joked that the shower she took after being rescued was “the best shower I’ve ever taken.”

“Once we got to the helicopter, a phenomenal experience that was so smooth and so — it felt incredibly safe,” Hayes said.

Their group was the fourth to get rescued, as rescue crews had picked up 12 people the previous day from Roscoe, Fromberg and Cooke City.

“Since June 13th, Montana Army National Guard helicopters have rescued 87 people and flown more than 41 hours in support of Search and Rescue operations due to the ongoing flooding in South Central Montana,” the Montana National Guard Facebook page shared the next day.

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