Sebastopol mother and son get up-close view of dramatic Yellowstone floods

A Sebastopol resident and her teenage son had front-row seats Monday to the flooding near Yellowstone National Park, watching as a house slowly slid into the Yellowstone River right in front of them.

Dramatic videos of the scene have gone viral as flooding has indefinitely closed parts of one of the country’s most popular national parks.

Tate Birnie, 47, and her 14-year-old son, Lucas, left Sonoma County last week for a weeklong trip to Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks. They arrived at their hotel in the small community of Gardiner, Montana, along the Yellowstone River just outside the northern entrance to the park. It was Sunday evening and rain was pouring.

“Monday was actually beautiful, crisp, blue-skied weather,” Birnie said. Nevertheless, she got a call around 7:50 a.m. notifying her that the whitewater rafting trip they’d scheduled that day was being canceled.

So, she went outside and walked two blocks to Gardiner Bridge, which crosses the Yellowstone River.

“Thirty-foot trees were coming down the river. I mean, it was a churning, chocolate-brown, massive mud river with tons of debris in it,” she said.

She returned to the hotel to make breakfast, then she and Lucas decided to head to Mammoth Hot Springs, 6 miles south of Gardiner. They made it less than a mile. When they got to the park entrance, the road leading south toward the hot springs was flooded.

Birnie said a ranger told them the road heading north from Gardiner was also closed. He suggested she keep tabs on the situation through a community Facebook page. “And that’s basically how we got all of our information going forward,” Birnie said. “There wasn’t really a centralized way to get information.”

Birnie and Lucas drove back to Gardiner, and after wandering around town for a while, they noticed a crowd of 100 people about a block away from their hotel, next to the river.

“Pretty much the whole day of Monday, the town of Gardiner watched the National Park Service house fall into that river,” Birnie said. “First the garage fell in, then the hillside went away.”

Birnie said they were first told to boil their drinking water because of the debris in the river, and then they were told to only consume bottled water.

Through everything, Birnie was struck by how the people of Gardiner responded to the emergency. She said the local Boy Scout troop set up a stand for free chicken noodle soup. The only market in town had long lines all day, but Birnie said the employees worked as quickly as they could to provide water and supplies. “And they just kept doing it with a smile on their face,” she said.

No one knew when roads would reopen or when the water would be safe to drink again. Birnie talked to a volunteer firefighter who said their biggest concern was the nearest medical facility being in Mammoth. It’s normally a five-minute drive, but the flooding closed the road.

Luckily, a group of doctors and nurses were on vacation in Gardiner. So that was the medical team in case of an emergency.

According to a National Park Service press release, the road between Gardiner and Mammoth will likely remain closed for “a substantial length of time.”

Unable to leave, Birnie and Lucas hunkered down in their hotel until about noon Tuesday, when Lucas noticed several cars driving toward Livingston, a city about 50 miles north of Yellowstone. They took note because no cars had driven by for about 24 hours. They checked the Facebook page and saw that emergency response employees had worked tirelessly to open one lane between Gardiner and Livingston, Montana. The post advised tourists to get out while they could.

Birnie and Lucas packed up, and as they drove toward Livingston, they saw collapsed bridges, debris everywhere, and flooded homes and businesses. Birnie later found out she and Lucas had managed to evacuate in a narrow window of time when the river was low enough. It rose again later that day.

On the seven-hour car ride from Gardiner to Idaho Falls, Idaho, where Birnie and Lucas flew back to Santa Rosa, the two tried to make the best of their situation.

“We did see a moose!” Birnie said.

Lucas had brought a book that his grandparents had given him, called “Totally Awesome Book of Useless Facts.” “He was just reading to me from that book, and we were laughing about the crazy facts he was reading, like the largest carrot is 19 feet long, just to pass the time,” she said.

Birnie and Lucas returned to Sebastopol on Wednesday night. Less than a day later, Birnie was bright and warm over the phone. “It didn’t ruin our trip, in this weird way,” she said.

As a Sebastopol resident, Birnie has experienced fire evacuation warnings and flooding in her own town. She said in some ways, the experience she had in Gardiner was similar. “It’s the unknown that’s the most upsetting part of it.”

Mostly, she just feels sad for the Gardiner community. “Because it’s a complete tourist town. It exists because it’s at the entrance to the park, and now if that entrance isn’t going to open all summer, I’m worried that community is going to be devastated,” she said. “And they were so nice.”

As of June 16, no deaths or injuries have been reported in Yellowstone related to the flooding.

You can reach Staff Writer Elena Neale-Sacks at elena.neale-sacks@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @elenaneale17.