16-Color
16 Parker Chronicle
September 20, 2013
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About 3 p.m. Sept. 13, the convoy took off to get the kids and their teachers and chaperones — who didn’t know that help was on the way to get them home. A message had been sent, but the camp didn’t get the message. Since mid-day Sept. 12, power was out in Estes Park. Gnaegy had made contact with another YMCA camp in Winter Park, and the person there was able to renew communication indirectly by connecting with someone in Estes Park who had a walkie-talkie or satellite phone that he was able to use in his car and connect somehow with the Estes Park YMCA camp, Gnaegy said. They would set up scheduled communications periodically this way to check on the kids. But after the decision was made to take a convoy up, and a message was sent about that, and somehow it didn’t get though. Gnaegy said she thinks it was because the camp got very busy at that point, as the camp, she found out later, had received word the camp’s road had
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an intricate project. There are so many moving pieces and logistics to consider that Doug Voss, project superintendent for Weaver General Construction, finds himself thinking about them in church. “I’m thinking of the whole picture. I have to keep in perspective where we’re at and where we’re going,” he said. “Just like the reservoir or any other project, I have to look six months to
maybe 30 minutes before potentially washing out. They were busy getting out the Douglas County students as well as students from a couple other schools. Gnaegy was later told that students were shuttled about five at a time in YMCA pickups that were being driven behind a front-end loader, which pushed water and debris out of the way, clearing the way for the pickups. The students then were taken to a restaurant parking lot and put on buses that they took about four miles or so to the Rocky Mountain Church in Estes Park, where they would be safer. Gnaegy said when the school district’s convoy rolled up to the church about 8 p.m. there were a lot of tears. “I’ve never been so excited to see a principal in all my life,” a student told her. The students got into the white SUVs, got food bags that had been prepared on a moment’s notice by the district’s nutrition services, and then the drivers took off for home. The drivers included Paul Balon, the district’s director of transportation, and district bus drivers, who coincidentally were quite familiar with Trail Ridge Road — which at its highest point is at 12,183 feet in elevation. They had trained on that road in the past as an exercise in
dealing with challenging driving situations. But on this trip, Trail Ridge Road didn’t have a “drop of precipitation … It usually causes people grief, but it was the road that saved us,” Gnaegy said. “The moon was out and guided us all the way.” The students, who had learned compass skills and using the stars for navigation at the camp, practiced those skills, on the way home — before falling asleep, Gnaegy said. When they got to Pine Grove at 1 a.m. Sept. 14, parents were lining the sidewalks. They knew about when the convoy was expected because of periodic emails about the progress. Gnaegy said she can’t say enough about the YMCA staff who kept the kids calm and busy with fun activities throughout this saga. And for the school-district team that put this effort together. The students got Sept. 16 off from school to recuperate and rest. Gnaegy said the adults would meet soon to discuss what could be done differently next time. But overall, things went well. Michelle Yi, school district spokeswoman, said that “this is truly a shining example of the Douglas County community coming together to work toward a great cause.”
a year ahead of time so we don’t run into a dead end.” Voss admits that he has help on the ground; two supervisors make sure the structure is being built according to design by the 80 workers now on the site. When asked whether he gets any time off, Voss, who oversaw the six-year-long construction of RueterHess Reservoir and Dam, says he has passed up on six weeks of vacation over the last two years “I’m not going to give them any time this year. They’ll have to do without me,” he says with a laugh. The $50 million treatment plant, funded through a revenue bond ap-
proved by the PWSD board in 2010, will undergo three expansions in later decades. When it opens, presumably in early 2015, it will be capable of producing 10 million gallons of water from Rueter-Hess Reservoir each day and take pressure off the wells throughout the district that pump out groundwater from vanishing aquifers. Voss isn’t cutting any corners and will take as much time as needed to make sure the final product does exactly what it’s supposed to. “It’ll take time to make sure the process is flawless,” he says. “We’ll be running practice cycles until we are sure we have a good process.”
ing that the results — which received national attention — could cause Democrats everywhere to think twice about the future pursuit of gun-control laws. “Each district makes up only 3 percent of the electorate in Colorado, but this election will have a tremendous impact in the state and beyond its boundaries,” he said.
it to the Senate floor: legislation that would have banned the carrying of concealed guns on college campuses, and another bill, sponsored by Morse, that would have placed strict liability on gun owners and manufacturers whose weapons were used in crimes. “I think it was too much on that issue,” Jahn said of gun-control efforts. “Strict liability was way too far-reaching for me. You have to look at ramifications and consequences. I do believe that some of them were not good pieces of legislation.” Kerr voted for the limit on ammunition magazines and universal background checks, but voted against a separate bill that requires people to pay for their own background checks. And Kerr said he was the reason why Morse didn’t bring the liability bill to the Senate floor. “I went to him and said to him I couldn’t support it,” Kerr said. “I ended up being the swing vote, causing that bill to not be brought up for a vote. He needed 18 votes and he had 17 without me.”
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“I am relieved to see that voters across the political spectrum stood up for their constitutional rights,” said Holbert. “We are elected to represent the people, not to negotiate with those rights. I hope that members of the other party, those who voted for the bills, will think about that.” But Democrats — while they certainly are disappointed with the election results — say it’s important to keep the results in perspective, considering that the elections were decided by a small percentage of Colorado voters. “This was a very small number of voters that turned out,” said state Sen. Andy Kerr, D-Lakewood. “They were very passionate, but a small sliver of the total population of each district.” But Loevy doesn’t think it’s possible for the results to be overstated, argu-
Tough votes for some Dems
Democrats probably didn’t know at the time that gun-control bills that were being passed during this year’s legislative session would result in firstof-their-kind recall elections. But they knew that the legislation had the potential of putting some Democrats in a tough spot with voters down the road. Sen. Cheri Jahn, D-Wheat Ridge, voted for bills that instituted universal background checks on gun sales in the state, but voted against another bill that bans ammunition magazines that hold more than 15 rounds. And Jahn nearly had to make tough votes on bills that died before making
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