Damaging floodwaters that tore through Yellowstone National Park menaced communities downstream where residents cleaned up from the mess and kept an eye on rising river levels.
While expressing optimism the river would drop quickly enough for the plant to resume operations before tanks were drained, the city of 110,000 stopped watering parks and boulevards, and its fire department filled its trucks with river water.
Remarkably no one was reported hurt or killed by raging waters that pulled homes off their foundations and pushed a river off course — possibly permanently — and may require damaged roads to be rebuilt a safer distance away. “We certainly know that climate change is causing more natural disasters, more fires, bigger fires and more floods and bigger floods,” said Robert Manning, a retired University of Vermont professor of environment and natural resources, “These things are going to happen, and they’re going to happen probably a lot more intensely.”
A house in Gardiner, Mont., fell into the Yellowstone River as the area received heavy floods and mudslides.