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declare a major disaster. governor brian schweitzer joins us on the phone from the state capitol of helena. what happened? this kind of flooding is rare, right? >> montana is peak snow country. the missouri river, the longest river chain in the united states, 70 percent of the water that nome flows in is is -- in it is the snow melt of montana, 50 percent of the water stored in the columbia river basin system, which is the largest river basin system west of the continental divide, is montana-stored snow. and anybody who is a trout fisherman, worldwide, they'll it will you the biggest, best trout fishing waters are montana, and every one of them, the milk, morias, yellowstone, blackwood, bitterwood, clarksfork, flatwood, kutni rivers, they're bankful and flooding. we had 800 percent of normal snowpack in the mountains, as low as 200 some percent
july. that's in montana. and that yellowstone hits the missouri and the missouri hits the mississippi, boy, howdy, we're going to have flooding. jon: we sure are. well, you've got it there already. i know you've called out the national guard and you're asking for a disaster declaration from the president, federal disaster declaration. you've got about, what, two-thirds of the state geographically that's having problems here, huh? >> well, but montana is not one of those places, and montanans aren't the kind of people that say gee, send in the government, we need help. we take care of ourselves. we have our own tractors and bulldozers and excavators, people will fill their own sandbags and when we open shelters, nobody shows up because the neighbors take them in but right now, i'm telling you, we haven't seen anything like this in 50 years and it might be the worst in the history of montana. jon: what do you need, what are you asking for from the federal government? >> we've got bridges and roads that are washed out,