Yellowstone official: Almost all visitors have left park

RED LODGE, Mont. (AP) — Yellowstone National Park officials say all visitors except for a group of backpackers had left the park by Tuesday as it evaluates damage from massive flooding.

Superintendent Cam Sholly said the visitors were asked to leave after roads and bridges washed out and power was knocked out from heavy rains and snow melt.

The flooding hit historic levels in the Yellowstone River, where it washed out several sections of the main highway from the park’s north entrance.

The torrent undercut the river bank and toppled a house where the families of six park employees had lived into the raging waters. The building, which had been evacuated, floated 5 miles (8 kilometers) downstream before sinking.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

RED LODGE, Mont. (AP) — Yellowstone National Park’s signature river reached an unprecedented level and unleashed floodwaters that tore through the surrounding areas, sweeping away houses, washing out bridges and roads, stranding tourists and residents, and prompting frantic helicopter and raft rescues.

The flooding across parts of southern Montana and northern Wyoming from days of rain and a rapidly melting snowpack indefinitely closed one of the nation’s most iconic parks just as a summer tourist season that draws millions of visitors was ramping up.

Instead of marveling at the site of massive elk, grizzlies and bison roaming freely, burbling thermal pools and the regular blast of Old Faithful's geyser, tourists found themselves witnessing nature at its most unpredictable as the Yellowstone River crested in a chocolate brown torrent that washed away anything in its path.

“It is just the scariest river ever,” Kate Gomez of Santa Fe, New Mexico, said Tuesday. “Anything that falls into that river...