Survivors Remember Horrors of 1972 Flood That Devastated Rapid City : Disaster: After two decades, grim memories still engulf those who escaped the South Dakota deluge that killed 238 people and injured 3,000.

After 20 years, Tom Hennies still remembers the ones he couldn’t rescue from the flood.

In the flash of lightning strikes, he saw them clinging to trees. Above the roar of water, he heard them screaming.

“There was no way we could get out there to help them,” Hennies said. “Some of them were falling into the water and hollering for help. Pretty soon it got quiet. They quit yelling.”

It was June 9, 1972, and Rapid Creek had become a raging river. It would leave 238 dead and more than 3,000 injured; it would destroy 770 houses, 565 mobile homes and 5,000 vehicles, and cause more than $165 million in damages.

And it would leave the survivors with indelible memories--people like Hennies, who was then a lieutenant and is now the city’s police chief. He nearly drowned when his patrol car, by then afloat, was run down by a house.

“Here came a two-story house down the street. I called in and said I was abandoning my car, I was about to be struck by a house,” he said. He was pulled from the water by a firetruck crew.

Though western South Dakota weather forecasts had called for isolated thunderstorms, some possibly severe, the storm system built and barely moved. It dumped 12 inches to 14 inches of rain in some parts of the Black Hills from late afternoon into the night.

Many Black Hills communities were hit by high water. But the worst catastrophe struck Rapid City, which lies along Rapid Creek below a canyon on the eastern edge of the Black Hills.

Rapid Creek, normally about 5 yards wide and a few feet deep, rose rapidly through the evening.

Survivors describe two walls of water that swept through the streets near the stream. One was unleashed about 10:45 p.m. when the dam gave way at Canyon Lake, a small impoundment at the upstream edge of the city.

“I guess thinking about it, you could hear it coming, and it sounded like a freight train,” said Jim McKay, a retired truck driver, who was swept away by a 12-foot-high wall of water when he got out of his pickup to help someone with a stalled car.

A floating tree and other debris pinned McKay against the side of a building, his head barely above water. He was rescued seven hours later.

His wife, Cleone, huddled in the back of the pickup with their two children during the night. They saved one man by grabbing him as he drifted past.

“It was a nightmare, and you never get over it,” she said, her voice choking with emotion. “We were lucky we didn’t lose any of our family.”

Ron and LaVonne Masters were not so lucky. The couple gathered their five children and fled the rising waters in their four-wheel-drive Scout, only to be swamped by the walls of water.

“My oldest boy, Steve, said, ‘Dad, this is all in God’s hands.’ That was the last words we ever heard from Steve.”

Masters, a minister, kicked the metal-framed window on the passenger side. He squeezed through the 9-inch opening, reached back and pulled out his wife.

Next, he grabbed his 14-year-old daughter Karen, who was holding 2-year-old Timothy. As she came through the opening, the water tore the baby from her arms.

Ron couldn’t extract the other three children because another wall of water roared through, leaving the vehicle submerged in the blackness.

The Masters and their daughter spent the next five hours or so clinging to the trees. “You can’t even begin to imagine how awful it was,” LaVonne said.

Another daughter, JoAnn, survived the night trapped in an air pocket at the back of the Scout. She said her brothers, ages 8 and 12, had shared the air pocket, but Stephen eventually stopped talking and then Jonathan was gone.

Ron says he’ll never forget the look of terror in his 10-year-old daughter’s eyes. “It just pierced your soul.”

As the sun rose, the water dropped.

National Guard units from a nearby training camp joined police, firefighters and others to rescue those lucky enough to cling to roofs, trees and other perches above the torrent.

Cleone McKay didn’t know her husband had survived until radio announcers listed him among those hospitalized. For days after the flood, people listened to a local radio station to find out who had died and who had survived. The station read messages telling people where they could contact family members.

Rapid City residents and disaster agencies worked to provide food, clothing and shelter for flood victims. More than 50 morticians were summoned to help prepare bodies for burial.

Work crews began to clear mud from the streets and buildings and to haul away the vehicles, homes and other debris.

Most important, Rapid City got financial aid, including $48 million from the federal urban renewal program, to clean up and take steps to avoid a repeat of the disaster.

The flood plain was cleared of homes and most businesses, and was converted into parks and recreation areas. There is now a green belt along Rapid Creek through the city where people can walk, ride bikes and fish for trout.

Canyon Lake Dam was replaced with a stronger structure, and dikes and levees were built to control floodwaters in one area.

In the event of another rainstorm like the 1972 deluge, water will be carried away faster and won’t seriously threaten any residential areas, officials say.

But 1972 must never be forgotten--the flood plain must never be built upon again, said Leonard Swanson, who was city public works director at the time of the flood.

“It will rain that much again,” he said.