Lessons from the 2022 Yellowstone Floods

Publication Date: 2023

Abstract

One in Five Hundred will be a film project chronicling the devastating floods in June of 2022 that affected Yellowstone National Park and its surrounding gateway communities. The flooding was a 1-in-500-year event, however, shifts in climate across the West are making events like this more common. Precipitation is falling as rain instead of snow, making rain-on-snow events, which often cause flooding, more likely to occur. The film will delve deeper into how these changing weather and climactic patterns led to the flood event, how it affected both Yellowstone National Park and the surrounding gateway communities, and what can be done to both rebuild the park and surrounding communities and help them adapt so that future flooding events are not as catastrophic. During filming for One in Five Hundred, interviewees shared stories about the effect of the flood on their communities, how they are recovering, and how they think disaster response could have been improved. Overall, eighteen people were interviewed for the film from both Yellowstone National Park and the gateway communities of Gardiner, Cooke City, Silver Gate, and Red Lodge. Interviewees included park staff, a hydrologist, business owners, residents, and a first responder. This study shares qualitative lessons learned from these interviews, so that first responders, emergency managers, and other communities can learn from the 2022 Yellowstone National Park flood experience for future natural hazards and disasters.

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Introduction

One in Five Hundred is a short documentary film (less than 30 minutes) that will explore the sociological effects and scientific causes of the devastating floods that tore through Yellowstone National Park and its surrounding gateway communities in June of 2022. Using documentary film to capture the lived experience of the flood and its effects provides an important perspective on how we understand and see those living through economic hardship, recovery, and interrupted livelihoods in the wake of disasters. Film provides a powerful medium to share the magnitude and ferocity of the flood and the resulting devastation. Seeing flood footage paired with personal stories of affected community members will help viewers more fully understand the significant impact of this event.

Yellowstone National Park is an iconic park in the U.S. National Park Service (NPS) system that hosts millions of visitors annually. In fact, 2021 was the busiest year on record with the park reporting 4,860,537 recreation visits, up 28% from the prior year (NPS, 2022¹). These visitors are vital to the economies of the local gateway communities that provide important services such as food, lodging, tours, and more. Local businesses in these communities rely on this revenue for their livelihood; the summer season is especially important to their economic health, as the park closes most of its roads during the winter.

From June 10 to June 13, 2022, a large-scale atmospheric river precipitation pattern brought from 0.8 to 5 inches of rainfall to the Northern Range of Yellowstone (NWS, 2022a²). This precipitation—combined with 2 to 5 inches of snow melt equivalent—led to historic flooding in the park and many of the gateway communities the night of June 12 and into the morning of June 13, 2022 (NWS, 2022a). The Yellowstone River crested at 14.72 ft just outside a gauging station in Corwin Springs, near Gardiner, Montana. The previous record height was 11.5 ft in 1918 (NWS, 2022b³). Soda Butte Creek near Silver Gate, Montana, crested as 4.94 ft and Rock Creek near Red Lodge, Montana, crested at 7.98 ft, which was also the highest recorded crest for Rock Creek (NWS, 2022c⁴, 2022d⁵). In terms of water volume, the streamflow of the Yellowstone River peaked at roughly 54,000 cubic feet per second, and the previous highest streamflows were all around 34,000 cubic feet per second (USGS, 2023⁶).

This unprecedented high water led to infrastructure damage. As seen in Figures 1–3, numerous homes, community buildings, and businesses were flooded after Rock Creek changed its path and started flowing into the town of Red Lodge.

Figure 1. Flood Damage to a Structure on the Banks of Rock Creek in Red Lodge, Montana

Figure 2. Flood Damage at the Red Lodge Community Foundation Roosevelt Center

Figure 3. Flood Damage at the Yodeler Motel in Red Lodge, Montana

The water also washed-out numerous bridges around Red Lodge and portions of Highway 212, which connects Red Lodge to Cooke City and Yellowstone National Park. Figures 4 and 5 show the damage in Yellowstone National Park, where the flooding washed out sections of both the North Entrance Road, which connects Gardiner and Mammoth, and the Northeast Entrance Road, which connects Mammoth and Cooke City. Both roads were impassable.

Figure 4. Washout at the North Entrance Road Between Gardiner, Montana, and Yellowstone National Park

Figure 5. Washout at the Northeast Entrance Road Between Yellowstone National Park and Cooke City, Montana

This significant infrastructure damage forced the park to close all its entrances from June 13 through June 22, 2022. When it reopened, some areas of the park remained inaccessible due to these washouts along both the North and Northeast Entrance Roads. Visitors were unable to access the park from several of the surrounding gateway communities including Gardiner, Red Lodge, Cooke City, and Silver Gate (Mott, 2022⁹). Due to both the direct flood damage and the loss of visitors to the park, the economic impact of the flooding on these local communities is difficult to fully comprehend.

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) deemed the flood a 1-in-500-year event, meaning it only has a 0.2% chance of occurring in any given year (USGS, 2022¹⁰). However, shifts in climate across the West are making events like this more likely. Spring is arriving earlier in the West and more precipitation is falling later in the year, which leads to it falling as rain instead of snow. Instead of snow melting more slowly, spring rains melt existing snow quickly and filter into river systems overwhelming them. Such rain-on-snow flooding events led to the June 2022 flood will become more likely in the future (Hostetler et al., 2021¹¹). Building resilience to these changing conditions will be important for all those who call the Yellowstone region home.

One in Five Hundred will share the story of the Yellowstone National Park flooding and explore how changes in climate lead to profound impacts on the human experience both in and around the park. Most Yellowstone rural gateway communities were established in the late 1800s, providing the services necessary for visitors to enjoy the park. Their livelihoods could continue to be impacted by disasters as our weather shifts in response to climate change. The One in Five Hundred short film will delve deeper into what caused this flood event, how it affected both the park and the surrounding communities, and what can be done to rebuild both and reduce the impacts of future flood events.

Literature Review

Documentary film was chosen as a medium to share the story of the floods in Yellowtone because audiences “approach these texts with two common assumptions—that the images shown originate in the historical world and that documentaries are perceived to go beyond merely portraying the historical world by making some sort of truthful ‘argument’ or ‘claim’ about it” (Cooper & Nisbet 2017¹², p. 6). As a result, documentaries are a movie style chosen to relate information and try to educate and persuade the viewer to support a certain point of view. Cooper and Nisbet (2017) speculate that one of the reasons the documentary genre is such a popular media form for environmental stories is because it can encourage viewers to engage with factual information and their emotions. The author’s state:

Environmental documentaries have the potential to deeply impact audiences because these films promote learning while viewers are entertained, because engagement with the documentary narrative (story) can overcome biases such as politically driven motivated reasoning (conforming new evidence to existing beliefs) and can leverage biases such as the tendency to rely on affect (emotions) when estimating risks. (Cooper & Nisbet, 2017, p. 1)

Because viewers often bring the assumption of truth to watching documentaries—and are more receptive to the information being presented because of the emotional aspect of documentary storytelling—documentaries are the perfect vehicle for sharing information with audiences about natural hazards and disasters, climate change, and other environmental stories (Nichols, 2001¹³; Aufderheide, 2008¹⁴; Cooper & Nisbet, 2017). Examples of films that focus on climate change and/or natural hazards and disasters include Chasing Ice (2012¹⁵), Chasing Coral (2017¹⁶), An Inconvenient Truth (2006¹⁷), Before the Flood (2016¹⁸), Elemental: Reimagine Wildfire (2023¹⁹), and many more. Nichols (2001) explains that documentaries “stimulate epistephilia (a desire to know) in its audience. [They] convey an informing logic, a persuasive rhetoric, or a moving poetics that promises information and knowledge, insight, and awareness” (p. 40). Audiences subconsciously know this history of documentary, and this desire to know leads them to engage with the medium expecting to learn about current issues.

Further work, by Kahan (2015²⁰) and Hayhoe (2018²¹) has shown that there are promising ways to engage skeptical audiences with climate change science to help shift opinions on the subject. Kahan (2015) has suggested a potential solution; filmmakers hoping to shift opinions on climate change need to find relatable characters that believe in climate change and are part of the cultural communities the filmmakers are trying to reach. For example, if a filmmaker is trying to shift the opinions of rural residents, then their film needs to incorporate rural residents as characters, so that audience members can learn from their own community about the topic (Kahan, 2015). Hayhoe, a noted climate scientist, has also suggested ways to talk about climate change with people that might be skeptical of the current science. She recommends that scientists can communicative more effectively by centering conversations around shared values and establishing mutual respect with the public (Hayhoe, 2018).

Based on recommendations from Kahan (2015) and Hayhoe (2018), if a filmmakers’ goal is to change minds about climate change, they should fashion documentaries that do more than just provide interviews with scientific experts. They should seek relatable characters that appeal to skeptical communities and provide measurable actions that those communities can take to mitigate climate change. Documentaries can also serve as a powerful medium for creating collective memory in a community, by sharing and socializing individual narratives about events (Waterson, 2007²²).

One in Five Hundred will share the collective memory of the Yellowstone floods with a larger audience and help preserve the story for future generations. The film will also draw attention to the importance of acknowledging the effect climate change is having on rural, tourism-driven communities that may be more prone to disasters. It is the authors hope that this documentary will reach rural community members and make them more receptive to the reality of climate related flood events.

Research Questions

The film will draw on different sources to answer the research questions below. First, the documentary will share eyewitness accounts of the flooding and damage from residents of the surrounding gateway communities (Red Lodge, Gardiner, Cooke City, and Silver Gate) and members of the NPS who were on the ground in Yellowstone at the time. Second, historians and scientists will describe the unique weather conditions that led to the flooding, the history of similarly devastating flooding in Yellowstone, the role of climate change in the 2022 flooding event, and how climate change could exacerbate future flooding events. Additionally, National Park staff and community members will share rebuilding efforts and local mitigation steps intended to minimize future flooding events. Finally, the documentary will share interviewee perceptions about the influence of climate change in this event and whether climate change is affecting their plans for recovery. The following research questions were investigated in this project:

1. How did the June 2022 flooding event in Yellowstone National Park affect both the park and its surrounding gateway communities and how will they recover and mitigate future flooding risk?

2. How do people experiencing extreme weather events perceive climate change?

3. How do perceptions of climate change affect disaster preparedness, response, recovery, resilience, and future prevention efforts?

Research Design

The research design for this project was qualitative. All data was collected through interviews for the One in Five Hundred documentary. A total of eighteen interviews were conducted in the gateway communities of Red Lodge (six interviewees), Gardiner (four interviewees), and Cooke City and Silver Gate (four interviewees). Four interviews were also conducted with Yellowstone National Park staff. Figure 6 shows a map of these four gateway communities and their geographic relation to Yellowstone.

Figure 6. Map of Yellowstone National Park and the Gateway Communities Visited for the Film

Because interviews were conducted in the process of producing a documentary film, qualitative data was gathered through video recording. This ultimately benefited the results of this research as documentary interviews allowed for in-depth discussion of the research questions with each interviewee. This produced detailed qualitative data and a summarized list of recommendations, which will be helpful to emergency managers in FEMA Region 8.

Study Site and Access

Interviews were conducted in gateway communities and ranged from 45 to 120 minutes, depending on the interviewee’s available time and the length of their responses. Many interviewees were asked to expand on questions that were most relevant to the production of One in Five Hundred. The location of interviews also provided visual context for viewers of One in Five Hundred. Table 1 shows the occupations of each interview subject in the film. The interview subjects helped identify interview locations to maximize their comfort during the interview process. Examples of interview locations include hotels and restaurants where business owners were affected by the flood, and a community center for two participants from Red Lodge.

Table 1. Interviewee Roles and Communities

	Red Lodge	Gardiner	Yellowstone National Park	Cooke City and Silver Gate
Interviewee Roles (number of people interviewed)	Business Owner (2), Resident (2), First Responder (1), Pastor (1)	Business Owner (2), Resident (1), County Official (1)	Park officials (2), Hydrologist (1), Historian (1)	Business Owner (1), Hotel Manager (2), Resident (1)

Interviewees were selected based on their leadership and community roles, and their ability to share about experiences across the following areas: (a) eyewitness accounts of the flooding and damage to either the surrounding gateway communities (Red Lodge, Gardiner, Cooke City, and Silver Gate) or Yellowstone National Park infrastructure; (b) the unique weather conditions that led to the flooding, the history of devastating flooding in Yellowstone, and the likelihood of flooding conditions in the future; (c) how the park and surrounding gateway communities are rebuilding and what steps they are taking to mitigate effects of any future flooding events.

Red Lodge Area Community Foundation (RLACF), whose goal it is to connect people and build community in Red Lodge, was instrumental in helping find interview subjects in the community. For interviews with park staff, the Yellowstone National Park film office provided names of people interested in being interviewed after reading a list of interview questions for the film. Interviewees from Gardiner, Cooke City, and Silver Gate were selected from residents who had participated in other media and news stories at the time of the flood, visits to the affected communities to share the project and ask about interest in participating, and recommendations from other interviewees about who to contact about the film.

The goal is to share One in Five Hundred with those who participated in all four affected communities. RLACF has already agreed to show the film at their Roosevelt Community Center. The film will also be shared at the FEMA Higher Education Symposium in summer 2024. The author has a letter of commitment from Montana PBS, and the film will be made available to other regional PBS stations. The author hopes to show the film at regionally significant film festivals including Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, The International Wildlife Film Festival, Montana Film Festival, Flathead Lake International Cinemafest, 307 Film Festival, and the Wyoming International Film Festival. It will also be submitted to environmentally focused festivals including Wild and Scenic Film Festival, Jackson Wildlife Film Festival, American Conservation Film Festival, Colorado Environmental Film Festival, and the Mountainfilm festival.

Interviews

Interviews were conducted using a semi-structured interview guide. Multiple questions were asked that covered each of the three research questions for this project. Interview questions were tailored to each person’s experience of the flood. So, business owners were asked more about the economic impact of the flood, while first responders were asked about the timeline of events and how they ensured the safety of the public during the event. Every interviewee was asked about their perception of climate change and how it might affect how they view the possibility of future flood events in the Yellowstone ecosystem.

Interview Sample Questions

Below are sample interview questions that cover each of the three outlined research questions. Interview questions were tailored to each specific interviewee, so the actual questions asked may differ depending on the interviewees line of work or area of expertise.

For research question #1 — How did the June 2022 flooding event in Yellowstone National Park affect both the park and its surrounding gateway communities and how will they recover and mitigate future flooding risk? — the following represents a sampling of questions that were asked to interviewees. For example, a business owner in Red Lodge was asked the following: When did you start to become concerned about the flooding and when did you worry that it might affect your property and community? How did it directly affect your motel and its staff members? How did if affect your yearly financial outlook? Can you talk about the role of tourism, especially Yellowstone National Park tourism, for the businesses of Red Lodge?

As another example, an elected official from Gardiner was asked these questions: What decisions did you make for the health and safety of Gardiner residents? Were you part of the incident command team that made decisions in the park? How have your participated in the flood recovery efforts? How long will it take Park County to recover? What steps are you taking now to move towards a full recovery?

Finally, the superintendent of Yellowstone was asked the following questions: What have been some of the direct effects of the damage on the park for the 2022 season? How the flooding affected NPS staff and families directly? How has it affected their quality of life? How did the flooding affect the gateway communities? For example, road closures? How has the NPS worked with and supported the affected gateway communities to help them recover from the flood?

For research question #2 — How do people experiencing extreme weather events perceive climate change? — the following represents a sampling of questions that were asked to interviewees. Almost all interviewees were asked the following questions: Are you worried about climate change, and do you think it may have contributed to severity of the flooding? Are you worried about flooding in the future? As discussed in the results section, how each interviewee perceived climate change varied across those that participated in the film.

Again, public officials and emergency managers were asked specific questions about climate change’s role in this flood including these questions: Do you think climate change played a role in the severity of the flooding? Are you concerned that this type of flooding might occur again? Do you think that climate change could make this type of event more frequent?

For research question #3 — How do perceptions of climate change affect disaster preparedness, response, recovery, resilience, and future prevention efforts? — the following represents a sampling of questions that were asked to interviewees. Do you think this flooding event has made the community of [Gardiner, Red Lodge, Cooke City, Silver Gate] more resilient? This question was asked to all eighteen interviewees in this study, with slight changes depending on where they live and how they experienced the flood event.

For this research question, first responders were asked the above question and more specific questions, including: Are the rebuilding efforts attempting to mitigate any future effects of climate change? Is climate resiliency a focus of this and future infrastructure projects in Yellowstone National Park?

Participant Consent and Other Details

All interviewees participated voluntarily and were not compensated. All interviewees, except for park staff, signed talent releases for the film. This release ensures participant consent to appear in the film. Park staff do not sign talent releases, but they did appear in these interviews in their capacity as government officials, therefore talent releases were not necessary.

Findings and Discussion

For each research question, key quotes from interviews are presented to share how interviewees experienced the flood, how they perceive climate change, and how they hope to make their communities more resilient in the future. Transcripts were generated using artificial intelligence in Adobe Premiere Pro. The quotes provided in this manuscript have been corrected as well as possible.

2022 Flooding Impacts and Recovery Efforts

It is clear from the responses of interviewees that the flood had a profound effect on the gateway communities surrounding Yellowstone National Park. While it’s known that the flooding had a large economic effect on the summer tourism season for all four communities, these interviews help to paint a clear picture of just how significant this effect was for many business owners. The closure of both the North Entrance Road to the park and the Beartooth Highway for part of the summer meant tourists had no easy access to the park, the economic heart of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

Red Lodge

In Red Lodge, one restauranteur described the significant impact that the flood had on their business:

So, when the flood happened, we were basically in then a two-month shoulder season and then Yellowstone still didn't open. And although the word got out that that Red Lodge was open again, we still didn't see it. So, we lost. I mean, I would say we lost two thirds of our income, and that income carries us through the entire winter.

Another business owner, a hotelier in Red Lodge also experienced a similar economic impact from the flood event:

We went into summer with more reservations than we'd ever had until the flood. And then they I'd say it's hard to put a number on how many canceled but at least 40%. So, we make our money in the summer and that's what gets us through the winter.

This flood cut off the primary source of income for regional gateway community business owners, the summer tourism season for Yellowstone National Park. Business owners in Red Lodge and other gateway communities realized just how dependent they were on park visitors, and some suggested that they need to find ways to diversify their income streams, in case the park closes in the future.

Two interviewees in Red Lodge also noted the psychological impact of the floods on themselves and their communities. This was not as present during interviews in other gateway communities. A pastor in Red Lodge said this about the flood’s effect on the Red Lodge community:

So, the first thing that I realize that I saw was the trauma that people realized that either they had lost all of their belongings or had come very close to becoming injured themselves or having their houses completely washed away. And when trauma hits your brain, you don't think straight, and so you're not able to make sense of things…So, what was normally the beautiful, typical regular sound of Rock Creek flowing through our city very quickly became traumatizing for us.

One of the other interviewees from Red Lodge, also noted the psychological effect of the flood:

There comes a point where you can't take this anymore. There's so much drama, you know, with just things you can't control. It's so hard. And I just I'm, I'm looking forward the day where we can just run a business and not be affected by the things going on around us if that's even possible.

These interviews help shed a light on the mental health aspect of disasters, something that was seemingly not covered in news media and stories about the Yellowstone floods. Reports consistently mention the economic loss of infrastructure damage the flooding caused, but the mental health of community members is not as present. Many interviewees in Red Lodge and the other gateway communities shared how the combination of the COVID-19 pandemic followed by the flood exacerbated the financial losses of their businesses leading to increased struggles with their mental health.

An interviewee, who is also a first responder, noted how quickly Montana Department of Transportation was able to fix the Beartooth Highway, a critical road that links Red Lodge to the park:

It was absolutely essential to get that highway opened quickly. Montana Department of Transportation, working with the governor's office got that highway opened really, quickly…And when it opened up at the end of July, we saw a significant increase in in business.

Fixing this road allowed some tourism to filter back into the community and helped mitigate the economic effects of the flood. By opening the critical infrastructure in a timely manner, residents were able to generate income from visitors that was critical to their ability to weather the floods financial impacts. The same interviewee also noted the importance of rebuilding infrastructure stronger and with higher tolerances for extreme events:

There's a lot of focus right now in our community on flooding and what the future will look like. And I think everybody's concerned, you know, will this happen again? And I think our community as a whole is working hard to make sure we don't see those impacts again. And we're fortunate that where these breaches happened in the stream banks during this flood have been repaired in a way that they won't happen again. They've been rebuilt with rock that's not going to roll out and they're a little they're a lot stronger.

Quickly repairing and strengthening infrastructure is one of the ways to build resiliency in communities with significant damage; ensuring that repairs address the recent disaster damage and mitigate against future events. This interviewee also noted that areas of Red Lodge that flooded were not in the floodplain. In fact, most of Red Lodge that flooded was not in a designated floodplain (FEMA, 2023²³):

So, there is a documented floodplain in Red Lodge and this flood hit areas way outside the floodplain because the floodplain is really developed based on elevation relative to a flood, not a stream channel redirection, which is really what we experienced here.... What we saw was the bank of the stream changing shape and direction which caused it to erode in places that would not normally see stream impact.

Clearly, as extreme weather events, including floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, and droughts become more common, government planners need to consider a potential increase in severity of these events when trying to predict the extent of natural hazards and disasters and how to build resilient infrastructure before these events occur. From these interviews, updating monitoring infrastructure and hydrology models could help predict large-scale floods before they occur.

Cooke City and Silver Gate

In the gateway communities of Cooke City and Silver Gate, the effect of the flood was primarily economic as the following two quotes from a hotel owner and a hotel manager demonstrate. The hotel owner shared the following about the financial impact to their business:

So, it was it was really financially just devastating. Our bank account went from really good to, you know, you're just pumping in cash from savings for the rest of the year up until and, you know, even now, we're still recovering. It'll be a couple of years before we recover financially.

The hotel manager shared a similar financial outlook for their property:

The results of the flooding…as far as revenue goes, we were down over 60% from a typical summer. And that has that has a big impact on a small business. If you're down 60%, then you know you're struggling to break even. This town. Every business in this town has just a few months to either make it or not make it because you make your money in the summertime.

In these interviews, Cooke City and Silver Gate residents recognized that their economy focused on Yellowstone National Park. A hotel owner stated a need to diversify their economy to make it more resilient should the park close again for any reason:

So, but we'll try to diversify it, diversify the economy by trying to put some of our marketing to letting people know about the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness Area. But we're just in the beginning process of trying to figure out how to make ourselves more resilient.

The 2022 flood event made the community realize that the surrounding wilderness outside Yellowstone National Park, as well as non-wilderness activities, could be emphasized in marketing to help draw people to the area who are not solely focused on visiting Yellowstone National Park. An important takeaway from these interviews is economic diversification for small, rural communities that are dependent on tourism revenue. For example, Cooke City and Silver Gate are cohosting a summer concert in 2023 to raise money for flood relief; events like this could be a model for this community and others on how to draw visitors that have interests outside of the primary economic engine of their region.

Another important lesson from the interviews in Cooke City and Silver Gate focused on the need for accurate communication about the status of access to tourist destinations after disasters. Residents and business owners in Cooke City felt that the park did not communicate that their community was open for business, and this led many visitors to cancel or change their plans, hampering some of the possible economic recovery after the flood. A hotel manager in Cooke City summarized this in one interview:

And NPS is a huge thing for us, but they did us a huge disservice by not having proper information on their websites. And so, we were highly disadvantaged and had to do a lot of reeducating of what our circumstance really, truly was. There was a lot of misinformation on our website saying that we were completely cut off and dislocated from everything around us and that was flat out not true.

Communication was also important during the flood event as at one point first responders evacuated Cooke City based on bad information according to one hotel manager there, “[a]nd so there was one point where the sheriff actually evacuated town accidentally. He got a bad notice. And through the phone tree, he ended up getting that he needed to evacuate town right that moment.” This flood helped highlight the need for timely and accurate communication between first responders, emergency managers, scientists, and engineers across many different jurisdictions. With such a large and fast changing event, it is easy for messages to get scrambled affecting the ability to ensure the safety of the public.

Gardiner

As with Cooke City and Silver Gate, the flood’s effect in Gardiner was primarily economic as the closing of the Yellowstone’s North Entrance Road due to significant damage (see Figure 4 above) led to a dramatic drop in revenue for local businesses. A local tour operator shared the following about tax revenue for business in the Gardiner community:

There's no doubt if you want to look at it from an economic standpoint, the best way to look at this is from tax receipts. And you can look at the overall impact on the town in 2022. Overall, the state of Montana's bed tax collections went up 14%, Bozeman went up, Belgrade's went up, Big Sky’s went up almost 44%. Okay. Livingston's was down 6% and this is all due to the flood. Then West Yellowstone was down 15%, Red Lodge was down 17%. Gardner's was down 65%. I don't know too many small businesses or even big businesses that can withstand the economic hit of losing 65% of your revenue in a year.

An elected official also talked about the effect on the communities in dire terms:

So, it was just a crushing blow when people started canceling reservations and those businesses had to return the money, sometimes money they no longer had. So it was, yeah, pretty dire. And we're not through it. Tourism has a seasonal boom and bust to it and folks around here make bank in the summer and those who survive have learned to hang on to their pennies so they can get through the winter and have enough to open the doors in the spring.

The financial loss in Gardiner makes clear the importance of the North Entrance Road to the town’s economy. Without the North Entrance Road, Gardiner effectively became a dead end and as a result suffered a substantial loss in revenue when compared to other gateway communities, such as Red Lodge, where tourist access opened sooner and visitors have more options for things to see and do then simply accessing the park.

As in Red Lodge, a restauranteur in Gardiner also noted the mental health aspect of the flood on community residents:

This is the most challenging, uh, summer of my life from like a mental health standpoint. It was almost where we are at a point of catatonicness of, uh, we were just so in shock. Uh, it was a very challenging year. I was not well, in the summer, um, just and I'm still not completely there, but I'm very hopeful. 2023 is going to be great, but that was a very trying year.

Much like interviewees in Red Lodge hinted at, there does not seem to be as much mental health support for those who experience disasters. In the future, perhaps part of the rebuilding and repairing affected communities can focus on bringing additional mental health resources to the area to help.

Gardiner’s residents chose to focus on two different areas for building resiliency. The first occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic and was re-deployed to help those affected by the flood, the Yellowstone Community Fund. The fund provides financial assistance to Gardiner, Cooke City, and Silver Gate residents who need it because of economic hardship. The fund was founded by an interviewee of Gardiner, and he had this to say about it:

Yellowstone Community Fund was formed earlier to help this community first when COVID hit and then when we had the fires which burned down 40% of our business district, impacted 16 businesses. So, I had a fund in place already, and I literally met people at the front door of the grocery store and handed them cash so they could eat that night.

By having the Yellowstone Community Fund already established, it made it easy to collect donations and quickly distribute them to those who were affected by the flooding. This could perhaps serve as a model for other communities that are facing threats from natural hazards and disasters. Having a local, community-run organization standing by to help can prove vital in situations when other sources of governmental relief might take more time to deploy.

Yellowstone National Park

The primary infrastructure damage to Yellowstone National Park centered on its roads. Both the North and Northeast Entrance Roads were washed away in multiple places (see Figures 4 and 5 above), making them impassable for motor vehicle traffic. Due to the public safety concerns surrounding the flooding, the superintendent of Yellowstone National Park made the decision to close the park:

I made a decision just to clear the park. And it's a big decision because, you know, we've got ten major hotels. You've got that, you know, 10,000 people in the park. There's a lot of repercussions to evacuating Yellowstone and especially in such a short amount of time.

This decision was not taken lightly considering the economic impact to the surrounding communities in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. As a result, the superintendent quickly implemented an Alternating License Plate System within eight days of the flood, which allowed some visitation to resume in southern areas of the park. This provides an example of ways to allow for some tourism to resume in areas that are affected by disasters. Allowing visitors to enter secured cash flow into Yellowstone’s gateway communities and helped lessen some of the economic burden of the flood event.

The superintendent and park staff were aware of the importance of the north and northeast entrance roads to Red Lodge, Gardiner, Cooke City, and Silver Gate. As the superintendent noted:

I think access to the park was the biggest priority. And I think getting these roads done quickly and so we could salvage next year because if we hadn't gotten the corridors completed before the winter, we would have started the spring and summer of 23 in a similar situation without access.

Moving quickly to repair and open these roads was accomplished with “about $60 million that was emergency funding through the Federal Highway Administration (FHA) that was immediately released.” Quick decision-making on the part of FHA, helped the park recover quickly and restore access to the park before November 2022, just four months after the flood event. The superintendent noted that using Yellowstone teams to plan and recover from the flood event was critical to the success and speed of the recovery process:

And, you know, we did not bring in an outside incident command team on purpose. You know, you'll see a lot of these major incidents where they'll bring in a command team. We felt that the command and control and staff, the team we have was better. And it would even the most experienced type one I see would be it'd be very difficult, especially in relationship to a lot of the communications that needed to occur with the governors and senators and congressmen and communities and counties and employees. So, we made a cognizant effort to really kind of do it mostly internally. And that was the right decision.

This lesson from the flood is something for emergency managers to consider in future disasters. The park’s organizational structure allowed the park to quickly assemble something similar to an incident management team. Park staff’s knowledge of both the park and the needs of the surrounding communities helped ensure the safety of both park visitors and gateway community residents during the flood event and allowed them to expedite the recovery process. The park frequently works with other state, federal, and local agencies to collaborate on infrastructure projects, wildlife management, and employee/visitor needs, so park staff were able to leverage those relationships to quickly develop plans for reopening the park and repairing damaged infrastructure.

Perceptions of Climate Change

Of the eighteen interviewees who participated in the film, thirteen (72%) acknowledged the effect climate change may have played in this flood event. Two Yellowstone National Park staff interviewed did not answer the question as it was outside their area of expertise, and three interviewees did not believe that climate change played a role in this flood event. For the interviewees that did acknowledge the potential effect of climate chance on this flood event, they made strong statements, such as the following from an interviewee in Red Lodge:

I am very concerned about climate change, and I do believe that it is part of what contributed to this flooding. So, we are told that what happened was got a late spring snowfall, heavy spring snowfall and then more rain than we normally would get. And the rain systems were sitting over the mountain, continually melting all of that runoff.

Another interviewee from Cooke City and Silver Gate shared the following perspective, “So, yeah, climate change is here. You know, people were saying it's a thousand-year flood event. You know, I would say something like this is going to happen every 20 years.” And the superintendent of Yellowstone also linked the flood event to climatic changes:

I think that climate change is playing a factor in relationship to the type of precipitation we get at certain points in the year and fluctuation in temperatures and late spring major snowfalls. And I think we got more snow in April-May than we did in January, February, March. I think that the shift between snow to massive amounts of rain and warming temperatures in a very short amount of time is the climate factor.

This change in regional weather patterns is something that was acknowledged by multiple interviewees. One interviewee in Red Lodge shared the following about how storm system dynamics could make flooding like this more likely to occur in the future:

My understanding is that the storm systems, rather than moving through an area, the storm systems are sitting in an area. And so, the rain that we were getting in the spring was odd because the rain just the rain system would stay over the mountain and then it would melt the snowfall at a far more rapid pace than if it were melting good heavy snowpack.

Another resident of Cooke City shared his concerns about the extreme events that could come with climate change, “[s]o it's really hard for me to…see this pattern developing because I don't really think that's what climate change is about. I don't think it's about a pattern. I think it's about extreme weather.” This was echoed by another interviewee from Gardiner, who said “[c]limate change is…unpredictable when you leave the average of what it's doing. And talk about the extreme events. Certainly, extreme events are going to be more common across greater Yellowstone ecosystem, across the world.” The two interviewees that did not believe that climate change played a role in this flood event, attributed the flood event to natural variability found in the environment. One of them said, “personally, I don't feel that climate change contributed to this flood event. This has happened before. You know, they said once in a 500-year flood. So, there's plenty of history of flooding in Yellowstone over the millennia.”

The interviews conducted for this film make it clear that most people that experience extreme weather events acknowledge that climate change may play a role in such extreme events, exacerbating them, and causing them to be worse than they otherwise would have been. However, there are still some that attribute extreme weather events to natural variability associated with any ecosystem. This small sample size of rural gateway communities does seem to suggest that overall acknowledgement of climate change’s role in extreme weather events is increasing, but given the qualitative nature of this work, no firm conclusions can be drawn.

Planning for Climate-Related Disasters

During interviews, it became clear that the primary effect of climate change on the recovery process for these communities focused on making infrastructure more resilient. The community of Red Lodge has already installed a new retaining wall that helps Rock Creek stay within its banks as it makes its way through town. In addition, rebuilt bridges are being redesigned to be stronger, wider, and taller to withstand higher flows that may come with future flood events.

An elected official from Gardiner noted that infrastructure repairs are proceeding with the effects of climate change in mind, “Should we put the supports a little wider just to give…more room for the river to roam next time? Having seen what we just saw, it seems pretty wise to try to build a bigger buffer.” The sentiment was echoed by the superintendent of Yellowstone National Park, who made clear in interviews that they are considering climate change when re-building damaged infrastructure from this flood event:

I think people most people know, especially in the big Western national parks, most of the road infrastructure and infrastructure in general is built back in the early 1900s, 20th thirties, forties. Climate change wasn't really part of the conversation nationally 100 years ago. So, a lot of our infrastructure, not only here in Yellowstone but across the national park system in America, is vulnerable to climate events and climate shifts. And I think as an agency, we've done a fairly good job of building in climate resilient strategy, ease into the investments that we make in infrastructure, whether it's rebuilding new infrastructure or making existing infrastructure more resilient to future events. But I have you know; this is originally called a one in 1000-year event. I think that was downgraded to a one in 500-year event. I don't think that means a whole lot anymore. I think that another event like this could happen a lot sooner than 500 years.

As infrastructure is replaced, planning for natural hazards and disasters that seemed highly unlikely in the past can help ensure resiliency to future events that could be exacerbated by climate change. It is clear from these interviews that those in Yellowstone and the gateway communities affected by this flood are aware that the reoccurrence interval of an event like this could be shorter now that climate change may be playing a role. As the gateway communities in this study rebuild, they are looking to try to take this into account when building infrastructure.

Of note in these interviews, the hydrologist for Yellowstone National Park shared that the higher elevations of the park are not easy to monitor for precipitation and streamflow, “[b]ut there are other portions of the basin that remain ungauged and inaccessible to radar. And so, we don't have a clear picture of precipitation or stream flows in many portions of the Yellowstone Basin.”

Almost all the park's streamflow gauges are at lower elevations and weather radar often does not paint a clear picture of precipitation in mountain ranges. This is something that could be improved moving forward. Having more streamflow gauges higher in the mountains of Yellowstone might have provided earlier warning to residents of these gateway communities. This advanced notice could have afforded them more time to try to mitigate the effects of the flood. Perhaps, steps could also be taken to better monitor precipitation in the high mountains to understand when locally heavy rainfall may become a concern for communities surrounding the mountain ranges.

Conclusions

Actionable Guidance for Emergency Managers in FEMA Region 8

Risk Communication and Disaster Response

Emergency guidance needs to be based on accurate information and first responders should have rapid information access to improve public safety. Due to issues in communication, evacuations in the communities neighboring Yellowstone were stressful and unnecessary. Findings from this research showcase the importance of using effective local response teams instead of outside incident command teams. Local emergency managers can have more location-based knowledge and understanding than national incident management teams.

Disaster Recovery

Findings highlight the following recommendations for actions to take immediately following a disaster. For tourism-dependent regions, opening the area as quickly and safely as possible can help to bring back economic activity to the area. There are systems that can be utilized to limit visitation, such as the Alternating License Plate System, which can be helpful in moderating the number of visitors in the immediate aftermath of a disaster. Opening roads and repairing other public infrastructure that are primary access routes for rural, tourism-driven communities would be helpful. These local economies need visitation to survive, so the sooner it can be safely allowed the better.

Some other key recovery recommendations include (a) bringing in mental health resources to help those directly affected by a disaster process the mental toll of the event; (b) creating opportunities for the quick release of funds to help rebuild damaged infrastructure; and (c) standardizing communication with regional stakeholders to share a consistent message with potential visitors about the status of these communities. Inconsistent messaging can reduce tourism and the speed of recovery.

Disaster Planning

When preparing for future hazards and disasters, interview findings highlighted the following recommendations: (a) Create a regional community support fund before a disaster, so rural communities can help distribute aid to community members before state or federal resources arrive; (b) Increase precipitation and streamflow monitoring in high mountain regions prone to rain-on-snow events to help provide advanced warning of flood or extreme weather events. This could also help improve hydrology models to better predict floods before they occur; (c) Consider the possibility of streambed diversions when creating floodplain models and maps; and (d) Account for a shifting climate when modernizing infrastructure to ensure it will be more resilient to extreme events.

Limitations

The results presented here are based on only eighteen interviews, so the qualitative nature of this study should be considered when interpreting the suggestions provided in interviews. Some of the actionable guidance presented in this research may only be applicable to higher mountain areas vulnerable to rain-on-snow flood events.

Future Research Directions

We anticipate that this study will showcase the power of film interviews for producing qualitative data about natural hazards and disasters. The wide-ranging conversations that happen during an interview for films can often yield more detailed information than surveys or shorter interviews. Interviewees often get more comfortable as an interview progresses, making them more willing to share information than they might through other information gathering processes.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank all the interviewees who agreed to participate in the film. Also, staff at the Yellowstone National Park film permit office and RLACF, who assisted with setting up interviews in both the park and Red Lodge. Finally, the author would also like to thank, Nicki Jimenez, Nick Hill, Nate Norby, Braeden Meyer, Dakota Linder, and Andie Madsen for their work on this project.

References