Girl killed when falling rocks hit family’s car at national park

Pat Cummings said she was driving down the road in Glacier National Park when traffic stopped amid sounds of horror.

“I could clearly hear a woman crying frantically, screaming, you know, ‘Please help her. Someone please just help her,'” Cummings said.

Park officials confirm a car driven by a family of five from Utah was caught in a rock fall that generated enough debris to fill the bed of a pickup truck. Some of the stones were a foot in diameter.

“Whether it’s rain, whether it’s wind, you know, all of these things can cause rocks to fall,” said Lauren Alley, a spokesperson for the park. “But rockfall in this magnitude is very unusual.”

A 14-year-old girl in the car was killed. Her parents and two siblings were injured.

“If there had been more cars probably closer together, I do think it could have been worse,” Cummings said.

The rockslide happened on the 50-mile long “Going-to-the-Sun Road,” driven by about 2 million people every year. The road’s last rockfall death was more than two decades ago — and the danger is not always preventable.

“It’s a little bit tough to inspect the mountain above the road,” Alley said. “Rocks are continually shedding as part of that geologic process.”