Name/Title
Teton Dam Scrapbook Rigby Thatcher and AndrusDescription
Rigby Thatcher and Andrus note reads:
Re: Office of Rigby, Thatcher & Andrus - Damage in Teton Dam Flood
Our office consists of an upper floor three steps above the sidewalk and a full basement.
In the basement was a very extensive library, a kitchenette, a supply room, and a room containing over 5000 reference files. Having received notice that the dam was breaking, we filled all the ground level window wells with dirt in front of either ply board or carpet up against the windows. When the water hit, the windows were all broken allowing water, mud, and trash of every kind to pour into the building through those windows, ripping off doors in the basement, breaking one door completely in two, swirling books, supplies and files into a mixture of mud and debris, bringing that mixture up the stairway into all offices on the upper floor where the water reached a depth of approximately four feet.
It tipped over every desk on the upper floor and destroyed several IBM dictating units, a new Xerox copier and several typewriters, adding machines and other office equipment.
The library books and files absorbed the moisture before the water and mud could be pumped out of the basement and those books and files lodged in the shelves due to extreme expansion causing us to have to cut and pry those books, files and supplies out of the shelves.
All of those things in the basement were totally lost and in addition to the water and mud, we hauled nine truck loads of muddy materials from our office.
One interesting note: The only door in the basement that remained closed was the door to the bathroom. It had approximately an inch clearance between the door and the floor, the water draining out of the office through that one-inch opening, and into the toilet, so that by noon of the day after the flood, the water level in the basement was at the toilet bowl level, with the door keeping out enough of the debris to avoid plugging that drain.