By JIM MANN/The Daily Inter Lake

Staffers at the Flathead Lake Biological Station still are reeling from the devastation from a fierce windstorm that toppled huge ponderosa pines Saturday.

Jack Stanford, the station's director, said damage to about 80 acres of old-growth forest has changed the character of the station grounds.

"We lost 30 or more of our biggest p-pines and about one third of the larger grand and Douglas firs on the entire grounds," he said. "We have thousands of board feet of solid old timber on the ground. It is very sad. I have taught ecology among these old fellows for nearly 40 years and I thought their greatest danger was bugs, not wind."

Tree damage was similar elsewhere along the east shore of Flathead Lake, as toppled trees blocked Montana 35 and cut power to people living along the lake. The highway was closed most of the weekend.

One driver died when a tree landed on his car.

Stanford said there has been similar wind events with less damage in the past. This time conditions were different.

"I think it's terribly dry and the ground wasn't frozen" when the arctic cold blast hit Saturday morning, he said. "By December, the ground's upper crust is usually frozen."

He recalled seeing several trees being knocked over, with their root wads popping out of the ground with an explosion of dust.

"That's how dry it was," he said. "It was violent. So violent that when the trees would hit the ground almost all of the branches would break off."

Stanford said the sudden drop in temperatures to below zero likely played a part in many large trees snapping halfway up the trunk.

Eric Anderson, the station's caretaker, said he was awakened at about 5 a.m. by the sound of crashing trees.

"They landed on a couple 500-gallon propane tanks about 50 feet from my house," he said.

The tanks did not rupture, but the lines from one were broken and the other was damaged and leaking.

"It whistled for about 20 minutes," he said. "That's how long it took for the propane to leak out."

As captain of the Yellow Bay substation of the Finley Point Fire Department, Anderson got a call at about 7:15 a.m. from the Lake County Sheriff's dispatch. A falling tree had struck a car on Montana 35 and a person was trapped in the vehicle.

Anderson jumped in the fire truck based at Yellow Bay, but as he attempted to leave the grounds he encountered a nest of downed timber on the road. Anderson put a chain saw to work.

"It took me about a half hour to cut my way out of the Yellow Bay entrance," he said.

Anderson met other responders traveling north from Finley Point at the scene of the accident.

A sheriff's deputy had already cut the tree off the top of the car, a Honda Accord, and Jaws of Life were used to extricate the victim.

"As we were extracting the person from the vehicle, another tree fell on top of the sheriff's truck," Anderson said. "It smashed the windshield but it was still usable."

The man who was pulled from the vehicle, Jerome Dubiel, a 24-year-old from Ronan, later was pronounced dead at St. Joseph Hospital in Polson.

Anderson said the storm continued to cause damage through most of the day.

"There was really strong, steady winds, with amazingly strong gusts," he said. "Trees were falling constantly. Basically from 5 a.m. you could hear trees falling all around Yellow Bay here until about 4 in the afternoon."

Stanford said the wind peaked about 11 a.m. with a burst that devastated the forested area at the entrance to the station.

Stanford said he, Anderson and Mark Potter, the station's maintenance supervisor, had just put the fire truck under cover "when we looked back up the road and saw trees coming like dominoes. It took the rest of the day to get the entrance road opened."

Anderson said the high winds blew the roof off the station's freshwater research lab, a couple of small buildings were damaged, and a camper and dump truck were crushed by falling trees. But houses and the station's building were not damaged.

Stanford said the station probably will need to call in logging contractors to help clean up the mess.

"We haven't gotten that far yet," he said, adding that he would like to see the timber put to use at the biological station with future construction projects.

"I just feel like we need to do whatever we're going to do long-term here with that timber, because it grew here," he said.

Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at jmann@dailyinterlake.com