Sect Orders Members Into Bomb Shelters : Survival: Church leaders say they needed to conduct a practice run. Traffic and sewage problems keep county officials in Montana busy.

Thousands of members of the controversial Church Universal and Triumphant, who have been gathering in a Montana valley just north of Yellowstone National Park in preparation for what they believe to be an impending nuclear attack, stunned neighbors and kept law enforcement officials busy Thursday night and Friday morning when they disappeared into about 45 newly constructed underground bomb shelters.

Church members, who believe a nuclear strike from the Soviet Union could occur between now and the end of April, flocked into the shelters Thursday night from nearby Bozeman, Livingston, Gardiner, Corwin Springs and the member-owned community of Glastonbury, after they got telephone calls from church leaders asking them to go underground within three hours, church officials and sheriff’s deputies said.

In cars, buses and trucks, the church members, who make up about a third of the 12,000 residents of Park County, streamed down Highway 89 to a main shelter that holds 750 members of the church’s inner circle and to an estimated 44 other individually owned shelters, each of which holds from 6 to 125 people. They were in the shelters by midnight and remained there until Friday morning, officials said in a telephone interview.

“The highway was filled with cars going into church property,” said Park County Undersheriff Lee Keto. “By 20 minutes after twelve, you could have shot a cannon through there and not hit anything.”

The exercise was the latest in a series of incidents that have fueled rumors and fears among local residents and relatives of church members that the organization is preparing to go underground indefinitely. Church members have been stocking the shelters, closing bank accounts, selling off their personal belongings and buying large quantities of clothing, bedding and medication.

Church leaders, however, have said they are preparing for an event they hope never occurs and that members will go underground only if there is a nuclear assault.

Church spokesperson Murray Steinman said Thursday night’s exercise was a only a surprise, practice run.

“Our goal was to see whether or not we could get everybody into the shelters by midnight,” Steinman said. “We didn’t announce it because by having a surprise drill we approximate realistic conditions. You have to work out the logistics in practice. Everybody was back at work in the morning.”

Local officials have been concerned that the church members are planning to occupy the shelters without proper waste water treatment and sewage systems, threatening to contaminate the environmentally sensitive area and possibly prompting an outbreak of disease among residents, livestock and wildlife.

Ken Anderson, director of the Environmental Health Department, checked several shelters this week, including the main shelter, a massive facility located in the Gallatin Mountain Range just outside of Yellowstone National Park, and reported that none had proper waste treatment equipment.

“There are articles that say in he event of nuclear disaster, they will occupy their shelters and let the waste spill on the ground,” Anderson said of church literature. “If a bomb goes off, I don’t care what they do with their sewage. But as far as some calamity in terms of Mother Nature, or an economic catastrophe, the rest of us are going to be concerned with what they do.”

By spending the night in the facilities with no waste water treatment, church members violated county codes, Anderson said. He said if they repeat the exercise, the county will pursue legal action.

In response to admonitions from Elizabeth Claire Prophet of a possible nuclear war, nearly 2,000 church members from all over the country have been flooding into Paradise Valley to join the 2,000 church members who are already residents.

Prophet, known as Ma Guru to her followers, claims to be the reincarnation of Marie Antoinette and Queen Guinevere and to talk directly with “Ascended Masters,” which include Jesus, St. Germaine and her deceased husband, Mark Prophet. She has warned members that March and April are a dangerous period and that members should liquidate their holdings and prepare for a possible nuclear assault.