Awakened by the earth rolling underneath her sleeping bag, Mildred "Tootie" Greene looked out the tent flap and saw a wall of water, rocks and trees hurtling toward her.

She yelled to her husband to grab their 9-year-old son, Steve, and then she blacked out.

Greene was among the more than 200 people along the Madison River on Aug. 17, 1959, when the largest earthquake ever recorded in the Rocky Mountains loosened the face of the mountain across from where the Greenes were camped, sending 80 million tons of rock sliding across the canyon.

The Billings family was among the luckiest there that night. The Greenes all survived uninjured and spent the rest of the night and much of the next day helping others.

Looking back on the summer of 1959, Tootie, 80, who still lives in Billings, finds so many unusual twists and turns that put her family in the middle of a night of terror, yet ultimately kept all of them safe.

Nursing skills

Greene, who calls herself "just a country girl," grew up on Pease Bottom between Hysham and Custer.

After graduating from high school, she went to nursing school, earning a three-year registered nursing degree through a joint program of Montana State College (now Montana State University in Bozeman) and Billings Deaconess Hospital.

She worked a short time before settling down to raise a family with her husband, Ramon "Ray" Greene. With Ray away at times with his job as a truck driver, Tootie wanted to be at home with their son.

She used her nursing skills to care for relatives, including her mother who lived with them for a time.

Although the Greenes usually vacationed in June, they decided to take an extended three-week holiday in August 1959 to tour Montana. When they reached Northwest Montana, they bought Flathead Lake cherries that Tootie canned at her sister's home.

On to the Madison

They ended the trip with a few days at their favorite spot, the Rock Creek Campground near the mouth of the Madison River Canyon.

When they arrived, the tree-lined stretch along the river where they usually camped was full.

Instead, they set up camp on an unimproved area on a ridge above the campground.

They pitched a new 18-foot canvas tent with enough room for the Greenes to have a sleeping area at one end, an informal bedroom for their son at the other end and a kitchen in the middle. Tootie unpacked jars of Flathead Lake cherries along with other supplies and put them in the kitchen.

Strange signs

On Aug. 17, the Greenes tried to fish on Hebgen Lake in a rented boat, but the wind blew so hard that they couldn't get the boat back to the rental dock and had to beach it down the lakeshore.

The wind had died down by the time they reached camp, and things fell eerily quiet.

Another thing struck them as odd, too. A bold chipmunk that had before come into the tent for food offerings kept its distance.

At bedtime, Steve had an upset stomach, so the Greenes allowed him to sleep next to them.

About an hour after they went to sleep they woke to the ground rolling like waves under them and an awful noise.

"You can't imagine the roar," Tootie said.

On a video recorded before his death in 2003, Ray described the sound as that of an old steam-engine locomotive at full throttle - only a hundred times louder.

Struggling out of her sleeping bag, Tootie opened the tent flap and saw water and debris coming toward them in the moonlight.

When Ray looked for Steve, Ray could only see the boy's arm and head sticking out of the tangled canvas of the collapsed tent.

A tree had torn through the tent where Steve would have been had he not moved next to his parents.

"If Steve had been there, he'd been a goner," Tootie said.

Tootie doesn't remember what happened the next few minutes. She may have blacked out from the shock of what was going on around her.

The next thing she remembers is going to their footlocker for clothes to put over her night clothes.

Only later did she realize that she was covered up to her waist with mud caused by the deluge.

Troubled escape

Tootie grabbed her purse and camera, and the Greenes climbed into their 1957 Chevy station wagon to leave.

When Ray tried to drive off, he discovered that a tree stuck under the rear wheels had high-centered the car, thwarting their escape.

Although the Greenes were OK, some campers below them along the river suffered serious injuries. At least 19 campers along the river to the west were buried under the slide.

The headlights from the Greenes' car drew a girl who said that her mother had lost an arm.

"I'm a nurse," Tootie said. "Maybe I am able to help."

She found the woman, Myrtle Painter, leaning against a tree and with a mangled arm and chest injuries. Tootie bandaged the woman's arm and stopped the heavy flow of blood.

The Greenes heard other people crying out for help in the dark.

One couple in their 70s was forced to climb on the roof of their camp trailer and then up a tree as the water rose higher. Surrounded by water, they couldn't be rescued until the next morning.

The rising water helped free Verona Holmes of Billings, who had been camping with friends and relatives. A tree had fallen on her leg, trapping her. She nearly drowned before the water lifted the tree enough so she could slide out from under it.

Higher ground

Concerned that Hebgen Dam might fail, the Greenes and others moved to higher ground now called Refuge Point.

Scores of others, who found that the quake had made Highway 287 along the north shore of the lake impassable, joined them.

Tootie and Steve were driven to Refuge Point by Gil Gunderson, from Bellevue, Wash. Also in the car were Gunderson's nephew, Verona Holmes and her seriously injured mother, Margaret Holmes.

Ray came in another car.

Tootie cared for the injured as best she could.

In several accounts written after the quake, survivors would call Tootie heroic because she took charge, administered basic medical help and soothed the nerves of campers who'd been through the worst night of their lives.

To make bandages, Tootie tore up sheets and towels she got from a camping trailer. She ripped out plastic upholstery material from the trailer to make ice bags. Ice from campers' coolers was plentiful.

People were in shock and had lost blood, but most of the severe bleeding stopped shortly.

Fatal injuries

The water and wind from the falling mountain sent people rolling through rocks and trees, breaking bones and tearing flesh.

A dentist, who was a World War II veteran and was camped on the Madison that night, told Ray that he'd never seen such gruesome injuries, even during the war.

Among the most serious injuries Tootie saw were the Holmeses'. Although Verona would have trouble with her leg the rest of her life, she survived.

Her 72-year-old mother, Margaret Holmes, who had cuts all over her body, later died in a Bozeman hospital.

Ray Painter had a gash down to the bone the length of his thigh. His wife, Myrtle, who had a crushed chest and nearly severed arm, later died, also in Bozeman.

Two other Billings residents had injuries. Seven-year-old Bonnie Shreiber, a relative of the Holmes, had a gash on her forehead so large that it would take 32 stitches to close. Ethel Steele, a friend of the Shreiber family, had a fractured neck.

Clarence Scott almost lost a thumb and had a shoulder injury. His wife had a ruptured bladder.

A Canadian man who was camped toward the river from the Greenes lost an ear and had a serious leg wound. The man's wife had twigs driven into in her knee joints, probably by high winds caused when the side of the mountain fell.

The dentist had codeine and Demerol painkillers, but Tootie was reluctant to give them to the injured because she was concerned about allergic reactions and uncertain about dosage. She did pass out some aspirin, even if only as a placebo.

Supporting each other

Emotional support probably helped as much as anything.

Tootie spent most of her time going from person to person, assuring them that help would be coming.

"I gave them encouragement," she said. "That seemed to calm them."

As much as some of them were in pain, none complained, she said.

She would later learn that another nurse was among the refugees and helped, too.

Ray circulated among the wounded, checking on them and helping. Everyone who wasn't seriously hurt pitched in, too.

Aftershocks and a thunderstorm unnerved those already on edge.

Tootie was so busy that she doesn't remember everything about those long hours, but she's never forgotten one tender moment amid the chaos.

Midmorning as she was working, Steve brought her a sweet roll someone had given him.

"Here, Mom," he said. "You need it more than I do."

About 8 a.m., many at Refuge Point moved to Hebgen Dam, where it would be easier for the injured to be picked up by helicopter.

Outside help at last

At 9 a.m. Raymond Bayles, a Bozeman physician, arrived by boat at the dam and administered painkillers, checked on the injured and then left to arrange for an evacuation.

In an account written after the quake, Bayles said that Tootie met him when he arrived at the dam and told him she had gathered 16 of the most seriously injured in station wagons and a trailer.

Not only had Tootie done a wonderful job with medical attention under dire circumstances, "she had kept them all under control and calm and quiet," Bayles wrote.

Smokejumpers also landed at the dam. So many sightseeing planes filled the sky that the smokejumper plane had to make three passes before airspace was cleared for them to jump safely, Tootie said.

Helicopters began landing to take out the injured.

About 3 p.m. when all of the seriously injured had been moved out, she finally could sit down to rest.

At 5:30 p.m., a helicopter was getting ready to leave empty, so the Greenes climbed onboard and were taken to the Kirkwood Ranch north of Hebgen Lake.

A man from Salt Lake City drove them over a road dozed out to Highway 191 and down the Gallatin Canyon until they spotted Gil Gunderson. Gunderson then drove the Greenes to Billings, the opposite direction he would have headed home to Washington.

They reached Billings about 10 p.m. and finally got to sleep, the first sleep they'd had in two days.

Insurance covered their car that had been swallowed by Quake Lake. The jars of Flathead Lake cherries still are there, too.

Remembering

Tootie plans to be at programs commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Hebgen earthquake.

Looking back on at it all, Tootie considers herself lucky many times over.

Not only did they pick a camp spot that escaped the worst of the quake damage, their son missed being killed by a falling tree.

After the quake, she was too busy caring for the injured to think about what had happened or might happen.

"We were at the wrong place at the right time," Tootie said.

Ray would see a larger purpose.

"We were there for a reason, and we were spared ... to help," he said in the taped interview.

Tootie finds another providential circumstance.

Although trained in hospital nursing, she'd never had a first-aid course until earlier that summer. A neighbor boy who was a Boy Scout and his mother were taking first aid, so Tootie did too and then took an advanced class.

After the quake, she would teach first aid.

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