Jay Calderwood talks about surviving the Teton Dam break in 1976

REXBURG -- The images of the Teton Dam breaking on June 5, 1976, remain a vivid reminder of the terrifying, but also awe-inspiring, nature of the disaster.

But the images don’t quite compare to hearing the story of 79-year-old Jay Calderwood – one of the three men who were atop the dam when it began to disintegrate around them.

Calderwood, then-39-years-old, was the general foreman over excavation at the Teton Dam site. For months prior to the break, he had worked digging at the site and laying pipe.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation had undertaken the dam as a way to prevent flooding from spring runoff and to supply famers with water. They estimated it would take three years to fill, but it nearly filled during its first spring.

Calderwood said that unexpected amount of water so soon after construction played a major role in the destruction of the Teton Dam.

On the morning of the disaster – a Saturday -- Calderwood received an urgent message to come into work at about 10:30 a.m.

“I told the wife I’ll be back in a couple hours … we’d had a heck of a heavy snow accumulation that year (the dam) nearly filled that first spring,” he said. “I told her the water must be leaking around the spillway, because the dam had almost been filled the day before.”

The problem, however, turned out to be significantly more severe. Arriving at 11 a.m., Calderwood observed a hole – about 10 feet around – along the northern edge of the dirt dam.

Water was quickly gushing from the hole and it was widening with each passing moment.

“I seen that hole in the side of the dam, and I thought – ‘oh man I don’t know that we’re going to be able to stop this,’” he said.

Calderwood and another excavator got into two bulldozers and began to shovel riprap into the water. A whirlpool had formed behind the dam above the breach as water was being sucked through the hole.

“The thought was … push it into the whirlpool hoping that it would suck it down and slow the water,” Calderwood said. “We didn’t figure it would stop it, but we were hoping to slow it down enough (so) we could figure out another way to stop it.”

They never got a chance though.

After less than 20 minutes of pushing dirt, Calderwood’s boss, who was standing on the dam, felt the ground beneath his feet shift and settle as the north side of the dam collapsed down on the gapping hole and water began pouring overtop the dam.

The superintendent waved the two men in dozers to get off the dam and took off running.

“I started to back up and the water starts caving in and washing out the dirt,” Calderwood said. “It just kept coming off in big chunks and getting wider as it caved it – I thought ‘Boy I’m not going to make it,’ I thought this was it.”

Calderwood was worried the dirt behind him would give way. He briefly considered leaving his bulldozer and running, but figured he would fall.

“So I stuck with the dozer and it didn’t catch me, but I thought it was going to,” he said.

Just minutes before noon, the northern edge of the dam gave way releasing more than one million cubic feet of water per second, according to the Bureau of Reclamation.

A wall of water – more than 20 feet high – thundered down the Teton River canyon obliterating a power station and concrete plant below the dam in minutes. The water picked up hundreds of recently cut logs, which lined the banks near the dam.

Those logs, along with heavy equipment, mud and debris became a literal battering ram for everything in front of it.

“It was a frightening experience to see how much power it had,” Calderwood said. “I’ll never forget the water going down the canyon and hitting huge cottonwoods – standing 60 to 80 feet tall and that water was mowing them down like … like they was mowing alfalfa.”

The wall of water rushed down the canyon heading straight for the communities of Wilford, Newdale, Teton, Sugar City and Rexburg.