Inside the emergency response to Montana State Prison’s water system failure

If the catastrophic water system failure at Montana State Prison had occurred much earlier in the year, it’s likely many of the resources crawling around the area would have been committed toward firefighting efforts elsewhere, maybe even out of state.

Had it come a few weeks later, the hardening ground would have presented workers with yet another complication.

“You wouldn’t see these resources in the middle of summer,” said Ed Greiberis with the Montana Department of Emergency Services, who is acting as a liaison between the bloc of government agencies alloyed around the water system failure at the state prison, which holds 1,600 inmates. “Resources go to the places with the most people.”

The situation at the state prison outside of Deer Lodge has settled into a sort of frenetic rhyth