Colorado Flooding 2013 Special Section by Peter Dettmann

C O LO RAD O F LO O D ’ 13 , A S P E CIA L SE CTION

SUNDAY, S EPT EM B ER 29, 2013

Awash in horror, a rise in spirit Floodwaters surround mobile homes in a park off of 37th Street in Evans. Tim Rasmussen, The Denver Post

Dan Hull, center, is assisted by Brian Marquardt, left, and Scott Johnson from his flooded home in Hygiene. Craig F. Walker, The Denver Post

Flooding turned a stretch of U.S. 36 between Lyons and Pinewood Springs to rubble. AAron Ontiveroz, The Denver Post

ater was everywhere. It choked creeks and rivers, created new ones, sent cascades of mud and rocks downhill, blasted through asphalt roads, knocked homes off foundations and flooded basements. Eight people lost their lives. One remains missing and presumed dead. The Flood of 2013 was remarkable for its breadth and duration. More than 1,500 square miles in 17 Colorado counties were inundated. So far, 1,882 homes are confirmed destroyed and at least 16,101 are thought to be damaged. Nearly 6,000 people remained

under mandatory evacuation orders two weeks after the flooding began Sept. 11. Water- and sewer-treatment plants were swamped, oil and gas pipes and tanks crippled. Hundreds of miles of roads were damaged. “Our sheriff’s office wildland firefighters talk about fire as a living thing,” said Larimer County Sheriff’s Sgt. Gerald Baker, who saw early signs of trouble responding to a report of road damage in the Big Thompson Canyon. “I have come to think of water that way, too. It chooses what it eats. The force of the water was just apocalyptic.” The water chose rich and poor, mountain folk and rural farmers.

There were intense moments and tedious periods of waiting, feelings of denial and isolation — and the sound of boulders. Amid it all, friends leaned on one another and strangers became friends. Neighbors emptied their freezers or caught trout with their hands. They shared communal meals by candlelight. Then the sun came out and cleanup began. Dazed residents took account of their losses, as did state officials, naming a chief recovery officer. The water was everywhere — a living thing, a powerful force, swallowing and sparing the people and places in its way.

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A man stands near the mouth of the Big Thompson Canyon. U.S. 34 was heavily damaged by floodwaters from the Big Thompson River. Hyoung Chang, The Denver Post

BIG THOMPSON

The Big Thompson River begins in Rocky Mountain National Park at a trickle, rushing east toward the South Platte River near Greeley. The river is one of the most controlled in Colorado, as much a conveyance of water from the Western Slope to thirsty Front

Range cities as it is a recreational amenity for people living near its banks in Estes Park, Drake and Loveland. Water managers tried to control the recent floodwaters by making diversions to Horsetooth Reservoir and Carter Lake and by holding back as much water as possible in Lake Estes.

But the rain kept coming — nearly 8 inches in 48 hours in Estes Park, almost 13½ inches in a spot near Drake. The river scoured the canyon, destroying U.S. 34, and rolled east, picking up the swollen Little Thompson River near Milliken before joining the South Platte.

In a narrow canyon, a thousand stories

By Eric Gorski The Denver Post

In other places in Colorado, rivers meander through tranquil valleys or stretch out over plains. There is little wiggle room in the narrow and rugged Big Thompson Canyon. In a flood, the river knows one path: through. Early on Sept. 12, floodwaters again swamped the small communities along the Big Thompson and its tributaries, inviting comparisons to the horror that visited the same places in 1976. Here, homes and property are family keepsakes, written down in wills. Families return to favorite campgrounds year after year. Log cabins bear whimsical names — or honor a loved one lost. Firefighters here are not professionals as they are in the city but managers at Ace Hardware and hospital workers. And when disaster strikes and their neighbors need them, they are selfless and brave. “There are a thousand stories here,” said Gary Wamsley, a retired Air Force colonel whose cabin in Cedar Cove weathered the flood. “People associate coming up here with peacefulness, with relaxation, with the beauty of the place. “It will be beautiful again.”

“Firefighter in the water” At Glen Haven Fire House No. 1, it was a slow build. Beginning about 1 a.m. Sept. 12, in an unrelenting rain, the volunteer firefighters fanned out across the incorporated town 7½ miles northeast of Estes Park, checking roads, watching for plugged culverts, urging residents to get out while they could. The sun rose, and “it wasn’t too bad,” said Capt. Tom Housewright. Floodwaters had deposited a punctured 500-pound propane tank in a parking area about 20 feet from County Road 43, the winding road that leads from Estes Park to Glen Haven and then down to Drake. The tank sat there all day, hissing. As the day wore on, the rain kept coming. The waters rose. Three mountain streams run through and near Glen Haven:

Maggie McDonald, a resident of Fort Collins, reacts to photos that her former Glen Haven neighbor Mary Nolan, left, shows her of the town, which was destroyed by the waters. The pair were gathered at Fort Collins’ Timberline Church, where Nolan had been evacuated to. Erin Hull, The Denver Post West and Fox creeks and the North Fork of the Big Thompson, which flows into the Big Thompson River about 7½ miles downstream at Drake. The county road was getting narrower in spots. If you put your foot down, it felt like sand. Downtown began to flood at 3 or 4 p.m. Townspeople carried chairs and tables out of Town Hall, which was still decorated in red, white and blue bunting from a pancake breakfast in July. The fire station was in the water’s path, too, and firefighters hustled to move extension cords,

compressors, motor oil, fuel cans and anything else they could get their hands on. Night was coming. Volunteer firefighter Clifton DeWitt was on his way back to Glen Haven after helping an ambulance reach a resident at H Bar G Ranch in Estes Park. He was coming down the switchbacks on County Road 43 when a call came in asking him to check on how the roads were holding up. DeWitt parked his Toyota Tacoma in front of a gaping hole in County Road 43 and got out. The road looked OK, like it

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would hold. Then he heard a metal barricade fall. He looked back and the beams of his headlights began to swing around, his truck pushed by a force he could not see. DeWitt ran two or three steps toward the truck before a wall of debris struck him at the knees, knocked him down and swept him into the river. He was underwater. DeWitt held his radio in one hand and a heavy-duty flashlight, the kind firefighters take into smoky houses, in the other. Below the surface, he could see the beam of light cutting through muddy darkness. DeWitt bobbed up and put his radio to his mouth. “I’m in the stream,” he said His colleagues heard his muffled voice over the radio. The swift-water rescue training DeWitt had received kicked in. He made sure his feet were positioned downstream and his head was upstream, and he swam for shore. He reached it, pulled himself out and scampered 12 to 15 feet up a rock face, his flashlight in his mouth. He was shaking badly.

DeWitt looked upriver. There was his truck, floating like a log, its headlights illuminating a cabin that had been ripped from its foundation and swept into the floodwaters. DeWitt heard one of his fellow firefighters call over the radio: “Firefighter in the water.” He thought DeWitt was trapped in the truck. His pants torn, a kneecap broken, DeWitt climbed over a rock ledge and made his way to Tom Housewright’s back porch. “We thought he was dead,” said Kelly Housewright, Tom’s wife. “Just the way the water was running. Those sounds. I could hear propane tanks, the house, his truck.” DeWitt has been asked many times whether he was scared, and his answer is no. “I thank God he helped me get out of that,” he said. “He was really watching over me that night.” The next few days would bring more work for the firefighters, from guiding evacuees to rescue helicopters to ferrying residents over the water with ropes. Downtown took a devastating hit. The Town Hall was lifted off its foundation and shoved 20 feet into the Glen Haven General Store. The same thing happened in the flood of 1976 — which claimed 143 lives in the Big Thompson Canyon — and the town rebuilt. The night Clifton DeWitt came out of the water, Glen Haven’s firefighters gathered in the Housewrights’ living room and drank beer and whiskey. The river outside was unrelenting and inescapable — a roar through the closed windows. Someone told a joke, one of those corny jokes kids bring home from school. Someone else told a joke. The laughter drowned out the torrent below. “We’ve got good people,” said Tom Housewright, 50, the manager of the Ace Hardware store in Estes Park. “Fire departments, this is what we’re here for. It’s a lot easier for us to process. The crew, these guys — we look out for each other.”

Camp David Three miles below Glen Haven on County Road 43, Pat Karspeck heard a terrible creaking noise. It was about 7 p.m. Sept. 12, and she was riding out the storm in her rustic two-bedroom log cabin with its handmade stone fireplace, outhouse and views of the North Fork. The sound of boulders crashing down the river in the blackTHOMPSON » 5B

the denver post B denverpost.com • sunday, september 29, 2013

THOMPSON «FROM 2B ness was unnerving enough. But that creaking — Karspeck worried her mountain home would be swallowed by the river that used to run 30 feet away but was now licking a corner of the building. In 2005, Karspeck and her husband, Milan, bought the property with proceeds from a $125,000 settlement check from Colorado State University. On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving in 2004, their son, then a senior in computer science at CSU, drowned while working out in the student recreation center pool. He was practicing hypoxic breathing, blacked out and was at the bottom of the pool seven to eight minutes before he was found. The lifeguard was out of position and distracted. The Karspecks named the cabin Camp David, for their son. The marriage did not last, and Pat got the cabin in the divorce. Through unusual circumstances — or maybe it was meant to be — Milan was visiting when the flood struck. When the cabin started creaking, Pat gathered up David’s ashes and pictures. Pat and Milan Karspeck ran in the rain to higher ground, eventually making their way to the safety of a neighbor’s house. Camp David was still standing as the sun rose Sept. 13. The stone fireplace was gone. Windows were gone. Water carried chairs from the kitchen to the living room, where they came to rest, nestled together. Pat Karspeck believes the same wave of debris that struck Clifton DeWitt in Glen Haven rearranged her furniture and collapsed the fireplace. “From then on, the story changes for me,” Pat said. “After that, I had fun for three days. I was going up and down that mountain, making trails, signs for neighbors, jacking up the cabin, dragging out rugs, getting mud out of them. I had more energy than I’ve had for years.” She and four other locals came to the aid of eight Fellowship of

A large section of U.S. 34 was completely washed out by recent flooding of the Big Thompson River in the Big Thompson Canyon in Larimer County. Andy Cross, The Denver Post Christian Athletes members from the Kansas City area. One woman was four months pregnant and her blood pressure was rising. The group tied together Pat’s bedsheets in a Y shape and positioned it in a meadow so a rescue helicopter could find them. “I’m glad I was there,” said Karspeck, 61, who owns a hair salon in Loveland. “I felt privileged to be there. I would not want to be a property owner trying to imagine what happened. I got to see it all.” For two days, Karspeck marveled at waterfalls she had never seen in the mountains around Camp David. One was a bridal veil, with two tiers. Another spilled down the mountain onto a dome rock. Then they were gone, leaving only wet rocks.

The little island Scot Harrington could not sleep. All night, he sat behind the wheel of his pickup truck, the headlights trained on the river. One, two, three vehicles floated by on the raging Big Thompson. Brake lights flashed on one car. Was the driver in there? Harrington did not know. He watched the car vanish into the darkness. “The bad thing is, people were

running around outside before it got dark and went looking for a way out instead of staying where they were,” Harrington recalled. “They easily could have driven off the road and not realized it.” Harrington, 35, had just settled into an RV park along the river in Drake when the water began to rise. He was there with his fiancée for a few days of rest and relaxation before starting a new job in Loveland, the latest oil and gas play he was chasing as a builder of pipelines. Early on Sept. 12, Harrington moved the camper to higher ground near U.S. 34 and County Road 43. They called it their little island. Others joined them, 15 or 20 refugees from overwhelmed Drake, with its cluster of cabins, campgrounds, inns and rustic A-frame church. No one knew what was happening, other than what they could see and hear. There was no cell service, no contact with the outside world. The morning of Sept. 13, Harrington and others in the group found trout swimming in still water that the flood had formed. He grabbed nine fish with his hands. That night, residents of

the little island feasted on fried trout and French fries. The next day, a CenturyLink helicopter touched down nearby to repair downed phone lines. The crew instead rescued elderly people who were stranded in a lodge. Military helicopters soon followed, but Harrington and others in his group kept giving up their seats to others. On Sept. 16, Harrington finally took one of those seats. “There are a few people who were there we will call friends the rest of our lives,” he said. “To see the way people come together in a crisis, … it’s amazing.”

A dangerous place Dianne Honstein heard hollering. Sitting in the dark in the car behind her Cedar Cove home with her husband, dogs and a few keepsakes, the rain pounding down and no safe way to get anywhere, there was nothing she could do. Honstein thought of horror stories from the 1976 flood, people trapped in cars floating down the river, screaming. It was 2:30 or 3 a.m. Sept. 13. One of her neighbors was in trouble.

COLORADO FLOOD '13 «5B Cedar Cove is a cluster of homes on dirt roads between two bridges below a sharp elbow of the Big Thompson, downstream from Drake, where the river turns toward Loveland. It has proven to be a dangerous place. Five houses washed away here in 1976, including that of Honstein’s grandmother. In 1998, Dianne and Lyle Honstein built their own home — fire-resistant with a cement roof and steel deck — on that same property, out of the floodplain. The Honsteins watched the water rise Sept. 12, frustrated but not alarmed. They felt secure in their home. And there was plenty to do. Dianne, 67, a retired nurse, packed up the irreplaceable. Her grandfather’s corncob pipe. Tintype pictures of great-greatgrandparents. Lyle’s confirmation Bible. The power went out and the phone died. Boulders rolling down the riverbed rattled pictures on the wall. By 12:30 a.m., the water had nearly reached the front of the house and the Honsteins moved to their car out back on higher ground. Then, the hollering. At first light, the scene in Cedar Cove was one of devastation. The river had run alongside the Honsteins’ house. It ran right through Evelyn Starner’s. Starner, 79, who worked for years at a nursing home and loved to read Westerns and romance novels, was swept into the river as a friend watched helplessly. Her body was recovered several miles downstream. Another Cedar Cove resident caught up in the flood, 60-yearold Patty Goodwine, is missing and presumed dead. “We are so blessed, so lucky to be here,” Dianne Honstein said. “We honestly did not feel threatened with death. We really didn’t, because we were in a very practical mode. I could see where people would stay until the water took them. You really think it’s going to be OK.” Eric Gorski: 303-954-1971, egorski@denverpost.com or twitter.com/egorski

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Stubborn storm wreaks havoc Welcome fall rains became a deluge late the night of Sept. 11, turning placid creeks into raging torrents that raced east from the high country toward the plains, spilling from their channels, overtaking irrigation canals and inundating communities from the Continental Divide to the Nebraska state line.

What caused the storms

A cold front pushing down from Canada stalled over Colorado

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A timeline of devastation Wednesday, Sept. 11

Sunday, Sept. 15

Thursday, Sept. 19

• At least five overlapping flash-flood warnings are issued in El Paso, Boulder and Larimer counties as storm-swollen creeks and rivers begin roiling out of their banks. A Jamestown is torn in half by a mudslide, killing Joseph Edward Howlett, 72. B In north Boulder, Wesley Quinlan and Wiyanna Nelson, both 19, are swept to their deaths.

• At least 1,253 people remain unaccounted for statewide.

• Body of James Bettner, 47, found in Sand Creek near Colorado Springs. D In Idaho Springs, 83-year-old Carroll “C.T.” White dies when the flood-weakened banks of Clear Creek give way and he is washed 3 miles downstream.

• State begins tracking damaged oil and gas facilities and related spills. • Hickenlooper names IHS Inc. executive chairman Jerre Stead, 70, to coordinate recovery efforts. E The body of 80-year-old Gerald Boland, a retired Lyons teacher and coach, is recovered not far from his home. • About 10,000 households have applied for $4.3 million in FEMA aid.

Tuesday, Sept. 17

Friday, Sept. 20

• Rain-free day allows aggressive rescue of people from marooned communities, although holdouts remain in Larimer County to protect their property. • No-flush orders continue in deluged communities, including Evans, where city has set out port-a-potties in neighborhoods. • Aurora’s state-of-the-art water reclamation system, Prairie Waters, shut because of flooding. • About 6,400 households have applied for $430,000 in FEMA aid.

• Hickenlooper frees $20 million in flood assistance funding.

Thursday, Sept. 12 • Day breaks on disaster affecting a 150-mile long stretch of the Front Range. Rain continues. Thousands are evacuated. Lyons, Jamestown and Estes Park are left islands by washed-out roads. • Body of Danny Davis, 54, found in Fountain Creek near Colorado Springs.

Friday, Sept. 13 • Gov. John Hickenlooper declares 14 counties a disaster and frees $6 million in emergency aid.

Saturday, Sept. 14 C Patty Goodwine, 60, and Evelyn Starner,

79, are missing and presumed dead after their homes in the Cedar Cove community of Big Thompson Canyon are swept away. Starner’s body was later found near Sylvan Dale Ranch. • Rain continues. Flows in the South Platte River are 9 feet above flood stage near Kersey. • Thousands rescued by helicopter in Larimer and Boulder counties.

Monday, Sept. 16

Wednesday, Sept. 18 • State drains $100 million from transportation contingency fund to begin road repairs. U.S. Department of Transportation kicks in $35 million. • Passenger and freight trains still being rerouted around Colorado because of flood-damaged track.

• Clean drinking water still an issue for flood-ravaged towns, including Ward, Allenspark, Manitou Springs, Loveland and Lyons.

Sunday, Sept. 22 • Assessment planned of nearly 200 high-country dams that held during the deluge but may be weakened.

Monday, Sept. 23 • State begins lobbying for increased federal support, including asking Congress to lift a cap on emergency aid to $500 million from $100 million, as was done for states hit by Hurricane Sandy. • Vice President Joe Biden tours damaged areas by air, promises if the federal government

A series of storms dumped more than 600 percent of normal precipitation for this time of year across most of eastern Colorado. The worst storms came Wednesday, Sept. 11, through Friday, Sept. 13.

0.01

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Tuesday, Sept. 24 • City of Longmont estimates flood-related damage to infrastructure at $148.6 million, including $80 million to put the St. Vrain River back in its channel. • The last person unaccounted for in the flooding is found. Final death toll: eight confirmed dead, one missing and presumed dead.

Wednesday, Sept. 25

Saturday, Sept. 21

Daily precipitation

shuts down, FEMA aid will continue. • About 15,600 households have applied for $19.6 million in FEMA aid.

• Damage to Boulder County-owned bridges, roads and buildings estimated at $91 million. • About 18,000 households have applied for $25 million in FEMA aid.

Thursday, Sept. 26 • Total cost of making permanent repairs to washed out roads and bridges estimated at $475 million. • Hickenlooper contemplates a special legislative session to hash out flood-recovery plans, authorizes $65.5 million more in disaster assistance. • City of Boulder estimates infrastructure damage at $48.9 million.

Friday, Sept. 27 • Larimer County estimates the cost to repair 20 miles of roads and 60 bridges at $55 million. Another $20 million to $34 million is required for road and utility fixes south of Estes Park.

Precipitation in inches 1.5 2.0 3.0 4.0

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One-day observed precipitation ending at 6 a.m.

Wednesday, Sept. 11

Thursday, Sept. 12

Friday, Sept. 13

Saturday, Sept. 14

Following the flow Rain from the storms flowed into creeks and rivers in northeastern Colorado, pushing a crest of water downstream. Precipitation that fell in Boulder on Wednesday night helped contribute to the flooding in Fort Morgan on Saturday. 1 Boulder Creek

2 St. Vrain Creek

North 75th Street east of Boulder 25 feet 20

3 Big Thompson River

At Colorado 119 east of Longmont 25 feet

Peak: 8.95 feet 3:15 a.m. Thursday, Sept. 12

4 South Platte River

Moraine Park near Estes Park

Near Colorado 52 north of Fort Morgan

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Peak: 6.86 feet 7 a.m. Thursday, Sept. 12

25 feet

Peak: 7.52 feet 8:15 a.m. Thursday, Sept. 12

Peak: 24.71 feet 8:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 14

No readings after 9:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 14

Note: Data are provisional 10

wed. sept. 11

thur. sept. 12

fri. sept. 13

sat. sept. 14

No readings after 7 a.m. Thursday, Sept. 12

wed. sept. 11

thur. sept. 12

fri. sept. 13

sat. sept. 14

wed. sept. 11

thur. sept. 12

Sources: Denver Post reporting and research; Mike Nelson, 7News; National Weather Service; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; Federal Emergency Management Agency; U.S. Geological Survey

fri. sept. 13

sat. sept. 14

wed. sept. 11

thur. sept. 12

fri. sept. 13

sat. sept. 14

Dana Coffield, Severiano Galván and Thomas McKay, The Denver Post

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the denver post B denverpost.com • sunday, september 29, 2013

COLORADO FLOOD '13 «9B

SALVAGING NECESSITIES AND TREASURES IN EVANS

Residents in Evans transport belongings from their flooded homes on Sept. 16. Floodwaters rushed like a wave into Evans, cracking a 70-foot gap in a levy and soaking through more than 300 homes. The flood knocked out the sewage-treatment plant, and no one could flush or shower for eight days. RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post

BOULDER

The canyon communities high above Boulder, settled by miners seeking fortunes in gold and silver, remain a draw for people who place high value in living in places that retain the allure of rugged. The creeks that

flow through them — the Coal, Boulder, Left Hand, James, Four Mile — add premium. But when rain fell for days over areas where forest fire charred the land’s ability to retain water, those creeks became tor-

rents and rushed east, wrecking roads and stranding communities as the now-raging waterways moved toward their meeting places — and into the St. Vrain River to join the South Platte River.

A freak weather pattern, then history in making By Jeremy P. Meyer The Denver Post

On the first day of school after the flood, Fairview High teacher Scott Peoples gave his history students a writing assignment. “You have now been a participant in a historic event,” he said. “What does that feel like to live through history?” Like many people who live in the canyons above Boulder, he was sorting out the answer himself. Peoples’ own story began late Sept. 11, as he drove home from back-to-school night. He followed Lefthand Canyon Road along the usually tame Left Hand Creek. Rain had been falling all day, but he did not know what was in store. “The thing about history is you don’t know you are in it at the time,” Peoples said. A weather pattern had set up over the Colorado Rockies, funneling moist air from the southeast. Heavy, thick, tropics-like rain pelted Peoples’ windshield as he pulled into the home he shares with his wife, Hyung Joo Kim-Peoples, and two cats.

“I was just saying it was a bad rainstorm,” he said. That night, everything changed. The National Weather Service in Boulder sent out its first flash flood warning about 6:30 p.m., concerned by a forecast calling for heavy, intense rainfall. Over the next few hours, meteorologists saw an unusual weather pattern set up, an upslope condition that typically brings deep snow to the Front Range. But this one carried rain. And it stalled. And grew. Water spilled down the steep Lefthand Canyon. The too-full creek roiled with sludge and trees. Peoples heard an unfamiliar noise outside. It sounded like kettle drums in the distance, but it was a beat that came to define this storm; boulders, the size of cars, bouncing down the creek like marbles. Raging waters tore out culverts, separating residents from escape. The swollen creek ate away at the ground beneath the road, and cascading torrents blew homes off of their foundations. A wall of water rushing down the canyon trapped

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a firefighter in a tree. Rowena, the community where Peoples lived, was isolated. Large chunks of Lefthand Canyon Drive were gone. Cars sat stranded on the bad side of the now wild creek. Peoples’ home was unscathed by the flood. But the power was off, and the pump to his well. The bridge that crosses the creek near Glendale was washed away, which meant no access — in or out. Boulder County issued mandatory evacuation orders. And a few days later, a military helicopter hovered over his house. He and his wife grabbed their cats and were hoisted and flown to Boulder. They stayed away for four days until they heard people were heading home. Someone had built a footbridge over the creek. They could drive a rental car up from Boulder and hike to their house. In tiny Rowena — where people are used to a day or two of isolation because of snow — impenetrable mudslides, still-roaring creeks and broken roads had remade their community. “It became obvious we were going to be in this for longer than we had hoped,” he said. Peoples had a generator and Internet access, so his house became an Internet cafe. Residents without power emptied their freezers and refrigerators for nightly community meals. “The one thing we all share in common was moving up to the mountains to get away from people,” Peoples said. “But this forced us into acting more as a community.” Peoples said he intends to stick it out for now, hopeful that the

Two trucks and a car spill into the water after Dillon Road east of U.S. 287 near Lafayette collapsed into a washed-out culvert during flooding on Sept. 12. Firefighters used boats to rescue three people from the water rushing around their vehicles. Andy Cross, The Denver Post electricity will return. “We are getting accustomed to the new normal here,” he said. “It’s like camping in a very large RV.”

Jamestown devastation Tara Schoedinger had heard the sound before — the unmistakable clattering of mud barreling down gullies around Jamestown whenever it rained hard. The 2003 Overland fire created a massive scar in the hills above town that no longer slows the rain, producing regular slides instead. But just after midnight on Sept. 12, the sound Schoedinger heard was not typical. This mudslide sounded like a freight train. Her husband ran outside and saw their neighbor’s house flattened by a debris flow. He called 911, and the town turned out to try to save its father. Joey Howlett was Jamestown’s patriarch, the former owner of the Mercantile, the 72-year-old who played Santa Claus, who knew everyone and was considered the heart of this tightknit community of artists, musicians, professors and mountain folk. Even the draw behind his home that collapsed and killed him bore his name — Howlett Gulch. “We tried to do everything we could,” said Schoedinger, who has been Jamestown’s mayor for four years. “But we couldn’t get access.”

Another wave of mud cascaded down the gulch. “Three of us almost got hit,” said Mark Wischmeyer of the Jamestown Volunteer Fire Department. “We heard the boulders coming down and crawled away. As we were realizing we weren’t going to be able to save Joey, the water was rising.” James and Little James creeks, which flow through town, were bursting over their banks. Homes along Ward Street would have to be evacuated. Schoedinger decided everyone should be put on notice to move to higher ground. First, a 1:30 a.m. emergency warning telephone call went out to everyone in town. Then crews started going door-to-door along Ward Street. Residents raced uphill. Twenty people jammed into one house on high ground, wondering what they would see in the morning. Conditions weren’t going to improve. Rain kept falling, the creeks kept rising and banks began to erode. “As the day went on, it got progressively worse,” Schoedinger said. The flooding split the town in half. The south side of town was evacuated and an emergency shelter set up in the elementary school that sits higher. She and others worked the HIGH » 10B

June Hill, with a bright umbrella in hand, crosses debris to get onto Main Street in Jamestown, a town in the mountains of Boulder County that was devastated by the floods. Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post

Across a city of extremes, tragedy and ruin shared By Sadie Gurman The Denver Post

Boulder was among the water’s first targets. It raced into basements, sent cars swirling down battered streets, swept people away and shook everyone’s notions of safety. The flood united in devastation of Boulder’s patchwork of diverse neighborhoods — from the affluent residents whose homes tuck into the base of the foothills, to the transients forced to leave their tents along Boulder Creek, to the University of Colorado students who used buckets to bail water from their dorm rooms before hundreds had to flee. Set in the craggy hills of the northwest part of the city, high above the swelling creeks and tributaries, Tara Raposo’s home on Cactus Court seemed the safest

place to be during what was shaping up to be the state’s worst flood in a generation. Raposo slept soundly in her Spring Valley home as the rain pounded her roof just before midnight Sept. 11. The family had received a startling flood warning on their phone, but living so high in the foothills, they ignored it and went to bed. She and her husband, Victor, awoke to the crash of boulders breaking through their fence and windows. It sounded like a freight train. A mudslide had swept down the hillside above, gathering rocks, trees and water that now poured through their broken basement windows. Raposo was frantic. She called 911. Their young sons sleeping, the couple rushed to barricade the home with bags of potting soil and mulch — anything they could find.

“I told them we had a mudslide, and it’s coming through the house and the basement is filling up with water,” she said. A dispatcher told them there was nothing first responders could do. “Everyone was saying, ‘Get to higher ground,’ ” Raposo said. “We were the highest up and yet our neighborhood was stuck.” Outside, the raging waters spared no corner of the city. Emergency officials closed road after road. Less than a mile away from the Raposo home, on Spring Valley Road near Linden Drive, Nate Foster heard the rain pelting his roof and swirling into a knee-deep pond in his driveway. He saw a pair of headlights and a man he assumed was a police officer shutting down the debris-strewn road. “But he was soaked and he

wasn’t wearing a blue shirt,” Foster said. “My wife thought, ‘That guy needs help.’ ” They realized the man was their panicked neighbor, David Braddock. Wife Laura Braddock’s Lexus SUV was floating nearly on its driver’s side on the road before him. A skinny tree branch was all that kept it from washing away. The man had retreated to his own car, and Foster and others were yelling at him to stay calm, to stay inside. But the water pooling in the driveway and rushing down the street was too deep to reach them. “The water was surging all around, and boulders were hitting it,” said Laura Braddock, who climbed to the passenger’s seat and waited. And then waited some more. “It was a come-to-Buddha moment. I was calm.” Braddock and her husband had been sleeping in the basement that

night because their hardwood floors upstairs were being refinished. They woke up to water surging in the windows and, in a haze, bolted. “We said, ‘We’ve got to get out of here, we’ve got to get out of here,’ ” Braddock said. “I jumped in my Lexus and took off down the street. It was pitch black, the lights were out.” The road was clearly flooded, but the fearful Braddock kept driving. “Then I started floating. I floated about 10 feet.” Her husband, driving behind her with their golden retriever, Sky, scrambled to a neighbor’s house to call 911. “He told them it was a life-ordeath situation,” she said. “They told him they had many life-ordeath situations.” Foster, meanwhile, found a rope and hatched a plan for a rescue. As he and other neighbors worked to reach the couple, the rain offered a momentary reprieve. The water in the driveway started to drop, and both Foster and David Braddock thought they could make a break for it. Together, they managed to open the SUV’s hatch. Laura passed forward a 17-pound cat and then crawled out herself, climbing between her grandchildren’s car seats. Two hours had passed. A search-and-rescue team’s spotlight illuminated the intersection of Spring Valley Road and Linden Drive about 2:15 a.m. on Sept. 12. There were 30 or 40 people, and Foster soon realized the gravity of their mission. The team had already found the body of 19-year-old Wesley Quinlan, who was driving on Linden near Cedar Brook Road about midnight when his car, packed with three other teens including his girlfriend, got stuck in the mud and boulders of another powerful landslide. But unlike Braddock, Quinlan and his girlfriend, 19-year-old Wiyanna Nelson, got out of the car and were whisked away, becoming the first casualties of the flood. Two other friends in the car made it to safety. Now the searchers with their lights were looking for Nelson, and it would be two days before they would find her body. Soon after, Dillon Road east of U.S. 287 near Lafayette collapsed into a washed-out culvert. Two trucks and a car spilled into the gap, stranding three people. Firefighters used boats to move the people to safety from water rushing around the wreckage of their vehicles. At 26th Street and Topaz Drive in North Boulder, Fourmile Creek swelled from its banks and raced into the first level of Josie ChaBOULDER » 10B

10B» COLORADO FLOOD '13

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Casey Roy, 9, looks through a window into the basement of her family’s flood-damaged home in north Boulder on Sept. 12. Floodwaters reached about 3 feet high in the living space. Torrential, nonstop rainfall along the Front Range started the night before. RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post

HIGH «FROM 8B phones and emergency radios to track every resident. Had they evacuated? Where were they staying? Was everyone OK? Then houses started to crumble. “Many of these happened slowly over time,” she said. “Some of them were torn away piece by piece. Others had the ground beneath them erode and they eventually collapsed into the creek.” Schoedinger said it could have been worse. “It could have been people we were counting, instead of homes,” she said. University of Colorado at Boulder professor Kevin Welner, who lives on the north side, couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “We were watching the town get destroyed,” he said. “It was devastation and devastating.” Welner likened it to watching the twin towers fall on TV after the 9/11 terror attacks. It was history in progess. “It was very similar, but on a smaller scale,” Welner said. “It was similar to that feeling: This can’t be happening.” Wischmeyer, the volunteer firefighter, said for days after the flood he couldn’t shake nightmares of seeing people’s faces underwater and visions of homes floating down the creek. “When I’m taking care of other people, I’m OK,” Wischmeyer said. “When I think about myself, that is when I lose it.” All but 40 of Jamestown’s 280 residents have scattered, but the community is alive on the Internet with a website and a bulletin board, where residents keep in touch.

BOULDER «FROM 8B con’s home. Her daughter, Sonia, woke her and her husband, Chenobio, and they started sealing the doors and windows with beach towels. Then, like a drill team, they started moving their valuables up the staircase to the safety of the second floor. They made trips back and forth all morning. About 3 a.m., Chacon stood outside and watched as the roaring water consumed her street. A neighbor climbed into an inflatable raft and rescuers spirited her away.

Lefthand Canyon residents Scott Peoples and his wife, Hyung Joo Kim-Peoples, follow a path west of Boulder to get home. The couple, who were evacuated by helicopter after staying in their house for four days during the flood, decided they wanted to move back into their residence. Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post

Flood damage in the foothills west of Boulder took on a new angle when seen from a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter Sept. 17. Members of a Fort Carson unit were conducting search grid flights. Joe Amon, The Denver Post It may be a year before an adequate road is built to allow people to return home. Jamestown needs $5 million to match funds from federal and state sources to rebuild its water treatment plant, roads, the town square. “It’s overwhelming,” Schoedinger said. “But I am confident that our community will rebuild

both physically and together as a community.”

“It hit me that I had to get out,” she said. Her daughter and husband grabbed her under her arms and carried her across the street to their waiting car, and they headed to a friend’s. The water was up to Chacon’s waist. By 3:36 a.m., the Boulder Valley School District had announced it would close. Geno Treppeda’s wife walked down to the basement of her home in Keewaydin Meadows to tell her daughter and niece, both 17, to turn off their alarms. “She hit the last step and I heard a splash, and I knew what was going on,” Treppeda said. There was 16 inches of sewage in the basement and more on its

way. “When they woke up, they were floating. The beds were bobbing in the water. It was surreal.” The next four days were a losing battle against the sewage; he pumped out about 150,000 gallons a day. Treppeda, who manages a restoration company, has often dealt with flood victims. Now he found himself calling around in search of pumps and Dumpsters and port-apotties for his own neighborhood. His friends had become his clients. And he was tallying his losses. His recording studio, gone. His pool table, gone. His in-home theater, gone. And most of his daughter’s possessions, her shoes, her

Coal Creek victory Jeff Fisher is an optimist. His backyard is filled with tons of mud, his camper was basically swallowed up and he hasn’t had hot water in his house for weeks. But Fisher did something remarkable as the

heavens opened over northern Colorado. He fought the flood. And he won. Fisher, utilities superintendent at CU-Boulder, lives in Coal Creek Canyon — a community of mountain homes along Colorado 72 west of Arvada. For two days, rain had fallen in the canyon. And then came Sept. 11, the night of the deluge. “Just solid rain,” Fisher said. “I took a drive around to see how bad it was. I parked my Jeep in the garage and kind of watched the rain for the night. I thought, ‘Wow, this is the worst I have ever seen.’ ” The rain fed streams, which transformed into torrents and headed onto his property. A small drainage near his house became a gushing river. Behind his house, a mudslide dumped mud, rock and dirt at least 3 feet deep into his yard, swallowing up a Suzuki Samurai and camper. In Coal Creek Canyon, at

clothes, her makeup, the independence she had gained by having a bedroom in the basement, gone. But the neighborhood dodged a bullet, said Jeff McWhirter, who heads a community group in southeast Boulder, where 75 percent of homes had flooded basements, some worse than others. The area missed the deluge from the creeks and rivers but was still blindsided, he said “It was like the slow-motion disaster,” McWhirter said. “The rain just kept coming.” Sadie Gurman: 303-954-1661, sgurman@denverpost.com or twitter.com/sgurman

least 100 people, including Fisher, lost access to their homes when their culverts washed away. But that wasn’t the biggest problem. “The river had changed path and had come right into my driveway and was eating itself towards my garage and my foundation,” he said. Fisher knows water is not easily deterred, especially in a flood. But he was going to give it a shot. He sent his wife and pets to town, stayed in his house and started a war. With his brother, Fisher crawled down into the washed-out mess that had become a channel that was eating away toward his home “and we built a little mini-dam in that danged thing.” The Fisher brothers found the biggest rocks they could carry and dropped them in place, packed in dirt and dropped in more rocks. They chipped out a little channel where they wanted the water to flow. “Pretty soon the water started eating away and we diverted the flow,” he said. “And we felt pretty danged good that day. That was

Saturday.” Sunday, the rains returned. And the brothers were back at it. “By golly if that didn’t do it,” he said. “We truly felt like we saved the house.” About 700 homes in the Coal Creek Canyon community were without natural gas for two weeks after the flood. Xcel Energy has been restoring those lines. The area also has been cut off because Colorado 72 has been closed, changing 30-minute commutes into two-hour slogs. The state says it will try to get the road open by Dec. 1. But Coal Creek Canyon has banded together online and through the efforts led by the Rev. Brian Young of Whispering Pines Church, shaping the next chapter in the story of their community. “There are so many good things that happened in this whole event that allowed us to stay and allowed us to do the things we do and continue to just live as normal as we can,” Fisher said. Jeremy P. Meyer: 303-954-1367, jpmeyer@denverpost.com or twitter.com/jpmeyerdpost

the denver post B denverpost.com • sunday, september 29, 2013

COLORADO FLOOD '13 «13B

Dominic Deleon, 11, of Longmont on Sept. 21 checks a bridge that was damaged by floodwaters from the St. Vrain Creek. Hyoung Chang, The Denver Post

ST. VRAIN

Most people experience the St. Vrain Creek and its complicated network of tributaries while walking or biking paved paths in Longmont, or wearing waders or hiking boots to reach top-notch fly-fishing waters and stunning views near the headwaters by the Continental Divide.

But the typically sedate river turned deadly under the weight of profoundly abnormal September rain and topped-over city and irrigation reservoirs. By the time the overflowing North, Middle and South St. Vrain creeks had converged and ripped through the town of Lyons, and the river gauges

A tranquil river turned violent, upending lives By Zahira Torres The Denver Post

A “For Sale” sign is posted in front of Nancy Arp’s flood-ruined home. Across the way, neighbors have hung a placard that reads “Garage Sale.” The signs are found tokens, spit back by waters that surged through their street and ravaged their houses in Lyons. They are an offering of levity by grieving residents whose lives were upended when the tranquil river in their town turned violent late the night of Sept. 11. Arp struggled to recover the few items of value left in the home where she raised her children and ran a day-care business. So much water rushed into the house that her kitchen refrigerator was heaved into the second story of her home. “I went from having a home and a business to being unemployed and homeless,” Arp said. For nearly three decades, the former volunteer firefighter had followed the same drill. Anytime she saw the St. Vrain River creeping up, she would grab a few belongings, wake her daughter and drive to a motel in Longmont. It was an exercise she practiced more than 20 times. This time it was the sound of large rocks and boulders being swept up by the river that sent Arp and her family to a motel about 11:30 p.m. that Wednesday night. “When you live in a place for 29 years, you know what the river is supposed to sound like,” Arp said, “and when it sounds different, it’s time to go.” One of every eight homes in Lyons was significantly damaged or destroyed when the St. Vrain raged from its banks. Retired coach and teacher Gerald Boland died in the torrent that obliterated roadways and carved new routes through neighborhoods as it rushed east to Longmont, where it wreaked more destruction. It scattered residents who sought safety and has left many struggling to recover.

Lyons resident Perry Corn waits with his wife, Angie, on Sept. 19 at a checkpoint at the junction of U.S. 36 and Colorado 66 in Lyons. He said, “We’re going to see what we can salvage and make sure no one runs off with the rest.” Craig F. Walker, The Denver Post A flood siren blared many awake around 2:30 a.m. Thursday. A frantic Kris Boldt woke up his wife and children and drove his family away from their Lyons home as floodwaters started to break over bridges and streets. But the quick rise of the water along the roads worried Boldt, so he drove to Lyons Middle/Senior High School, which is on higher ground and near a bluff. Floodwaters did not reach the high school, and eventually Boldt and his family returned home, where he combed the Internet for information and fretted over how to protect his family. By Friday, Boldt had a plan. After seeing tents pop up on the nearby bluff, he set up his own that afternoon. Around dusk, the family hiked to the top. They camped thinking that if the flooding worsened, they’d be safe on higher ground. “It’s scary because you’re worried about your kids most of all,” Boldt said. “You’re thinking, ‘Are we going to die?’ ” Martha Garza and her husband were already stirring after hearing what they thought was the bear that had killed two of their five Chihuahuas breaking branches in their backyard. But the clamor was more menacing:

the splintering of trees being taken by a churning torrent just steps away. The Garzas, who rent a home behind a gas station, evacuated by 4 a.m. and stayed at an emergency shelter at LifeBridge Christian Church, a few miles away in Longmont. On a recent afternoon, Martha looked after the children at the shelter while her husband searched for jobs in other towns. They have lived in Lyons for 10 years but are now considering moving to another state. “I wouldn’t want to because I love my beautiful Colorado, but we have to see if things get better here,” Garza said. Lyons residents, even those whose houses were untouched, will not be able to return home for two to six months until the city can restore utilities. The utility lines, which typically run along the river, were destroyed during the flood. E. coli has been found in the town’s water supply. Self-billed as the double gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park, Lyons depends heavily on tourism dollars. The town collects about $500,000 in sales taxes — much of it from out-oftowners — every year, about a third of its budget, Mayor Julie

washed out, the river was flowing at least 10 times greater than its normal autumn rate. The torrential river continued to the southeast, tearing through Hygiene and southwest Longmont, rechanneling as it swept northeast and swamping neighborhoods as it rushed to the South Platte River.

Van Domelen said. “Our town is a town of small businesses,” Van Domelen said. “We don’t have any chain stores. Those small businesses are invested in Lyons. Having the town shut down for a month or two doesn’t help them.” All along the path of the river’s destruction, residents are grappling with immediate challenges. The lease that Sara Rodriguez and her boyfriend, Jessie Perovich, had for their home was terminated. The news came shortly after Sara was evacuated by a National Guard truck on Sept. 13. The couple will get their deposit back, but not for another two months. Because Rodriguez has a fear of large crowds, they lived out of their 1986 Mitsubishi Montero for five days and bought ramen noodles that they could heat up in the microwave at 7-Eleven. Now they’re staying with a cousin in Thornton. Perovich said they are saving money to get an apartment in Longmont, but even that will be difficult because the flooding has created waiting lists. “Things are getting better slowly,” Perovich said. “We’re still in the shock of moving and having nowhere to go.” In Longmont and Hygiene, many residents who did not live in typical flood zones will have to scrape together savings, rely on federal assistance or choose not to repair damaged homes because they do not have flood insurance. The rain had started changing the landscape near Ron Krenzel and Janet Hallas’ Longmont home that Thursday. The next day, Krenzel decided to make a run to the grocery store before things worsened. He inched his vehicle through about a foot of water, but when he reached the end of his long driveway, the truck toppled into a large hole that had been masked by the flooding. Krenzel squeezed out of the truck through its back window and called Hallas for help. He jumped onto the hood of the Suburban she drove carefully to him and the two returned to the house, where they were stranded without electricity for three days.

What used to be a pasture and a dirt road that offered one route back into Longmont is now part of the river. A part of the concrete bridge that provided the couple another route to town has collapsed and is not passable. The couple had laid an extension ladder over the chasm of the bridge so they could forge across, but friends recently built a wooden walkway they now use. Every morning they walk from their house, around the large sinkhole that sucked in Krenzel’s truck and over the makeshift bridge to their cars, which now are parked on the other side of the collapsed bridge. “I think a lot of people in this area are going to have some kind of daily obstacle in their lives for some time,” Krenzel said. The water made its way toward Kurt and Ursula Rosner’s home in Longmont near the intersection of Airport Road and Ninth Avenue. The couple, both in their 80s, rushed to a neighbor’s house, where they packed up their friend’s oxygen tank and the trio headed for a shelter. After a night there, a volunteer offered them a place in their home. “She must have seen how bedraggled we looked,” Ursula said. On one recent afternoon, the Rosners assessed the damage to the basement they had just remodeled. The force of the water cracked the bathroom countertops, piled a sofa on other furniture and covered everything with mud. “This was supposed to be our last home before the nursing home,” Ursula said. Ursula was a refugee for five years during World War II — the worst years of her life, she said. The flood brought back some of those memories. “I had the same feeling of being a refugee again,” Ursula said. “You walk out with nothing. I feel like I’m back in Germany. The only difference is that in Germany, we weren’t taken in by anyone. No one would help us. No one was worried about us.” Zahira Torres: 303-954-1244, ztorres@denverpost.com or twitter.com/zahiratorresdp

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People walk along a flooded 37th Street in Evans on Sept. 16. They were carrying belongings recovered from flooded homes. Tim Rasmussen, The Denver Post

SOUTH PLATTE

The Flood of 2013 reached the Colorado’s Eastern Plains last, a slowly growing surge that gathered power from the Cache la Poudre, Big Thompson and St. Vrain rivers and poured it into the South Platte. The inundation started the morning of Sept. 13 and continued for days. The debris-filled pulse spilled into Johnstown, where irrigation ditches that nurtured fields for a century overflowed their

banks, and passed through Milliken, washing out a trailer park on the north side of town and damaging oil tanks. It moved through La Salle, drenching properties along the river and rushed like a wave into Evans, cracking a 70-foot gap in a levy and soaking through more than 300 homes. It continued its slow push northeast, rising more than 9 feet in two hours Sept. 15 in Fort Morgan, where the South Platte

At first, disbelief, then a muddy wave of harsh reality Never Clean Your Gutters Again. ®

By Ray Mark Rinaldi The Denver Post

For certain, the water was heading to the Eastern Plains, and everyone knew it. Folks there watched and read and clicked on news stories as a week of relentless rainfall remade itself into ravaging floods in the elevated Colorado towns upstream. And yet. “I didn’t think the water would come up this high,” said Kevin Roth, whose home on County Road 52, just east of La Salle, was drowned like scores of others on Friday, Sept. 13. From Johnstown to Kersey, that has been the No. 1 most-re-

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reached 24.71 feet before river gauges washed out. In Sterling, the sewer plant was deluged and the history museum filled with water. At Julesburg, the river’s last stop before spilling into Nebraska, residents girded for disaster but, in the end, wrangled only with lakes brimming over and bridges covered by debris that rode in on recordhigh waters.

peated phrase these days. And No. 2: “It was up to here,” people say, holding out their hands, palms parallel to the ground, fingers stretched as flat as asphalt, while they touch their ankles or their calves, the tops of piano benches in their living rooms, the second rung of the electric livestock fence in their backyards, the hoods of low-rider Cadillacs in their garages, their ribs or breasts. Denial was a reasonable course that day. There was no way to know where the water would push exactly, and no way to stop it anyway, whether it came at you as a torrent or an ooze. PLATTE » 15B

the denver post B denverpost.com • sunday, september 29, 2013

COLORADO FLOOD '13 «15B

Araceli Romero was happy to find some dry family photos as she went through her Evans home, searching for belongings to salvage after the flood. RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post

PLATTE «FROM 14B For Roth, and so many here, the water arrived like a daily tide. Starting about 9 a.m., Roth could see it rising from the South Platte River, a few hundred feet away, and coming through the trees and into the cornfield across the street. First a puddle, then a bulging lake. “By 2, it was starting to make us nervous,” he said. By 6 p.m., it was taking over his front steps, and the family abandoned its homestead, a sturdy two-story with red timbers holding up the front porch. They returned after 12 hours, although a week later they were still unsure how to remedy their contaminated well. “It was up to here,” Roth said, after the deluge, placing his hand along his garage wall, a good 6 inches above a line marking the 100-year-flood level. Teri Cast lives 15 miles to the west but realized trouble was coming hours later, and her troubles turned out to be bigger. She lives in Johnstown, on County Road 17, a mile south of the business district and into cow and crop terrain. It wasn’t the overflowing Little Thompson River, a few football fields south, that ravaged her place, but a 100-year-old irrigation ditch. “It rained all Friday afternoon,” she said, “And that ditch was full by 5.” Still, it didn’t seem so bad, until authorities knocked on the door at 6 p.m. with a warning to get her family out. They left their dogs behind, 12-year-old Domino and 5-yearold Pup, not knowing the water would swell even more, sneaking inside the house through the basement as it simultaneously rushed from the outside via land. The dogs were washed away. Two days later, after the water receded, they found Domino with a neighbor, a reunion enabled by Facebook. Pup was discovered Tuesday across the road, about 200 feet away. Cold but alive; he’s still recuperating at the vet. “I was sick to my stomach,” said Cast. She has more to worry about. The house is drenched, slippery with grit, it smells rotten, and they will not return soon. Her family is camped out with her mother in Loveland these days, considering offers from strangers for rental housing or even a loaned camper. The water was less graceful when it toppled — like a wave you could surf — into the low sections of Milliken 3 miles east, drowning crops and downing fences. It took 10 of the little brownand-white goats Bill Vigil raises in a field above town to supplement his retirement income. It

knocked over fuel storage tanks, releasing thousands of gallons of oil into floodwaters. Worst hit was the mobile home park off Josephine Avenue, a cozy, 4-decade-old neighborhood where residents have planted purple morning glories and set statues of Our Lady of Guadalupe in their little yards. Now, most of the trailers have rectangular, red tags on them that read: “UNSAFE.” Paula Grado was asleep in her place, a beige trailer where she lived for 23 years, when a knock came with advice to leave immediately because water was rushing into the grounds. She took nothing with her. Her house, already 3 feet off the ground, took another 2 feet of water inside. “It’s too much to think about,” she said in the days after as she waited for Federal Emergency Management Agency officials to determine whether she could start cleaning her muddy carpets and salvaging her clothes and bedding. A few doors down, her neighbors, John and Blanca Vega, both 61, got the knock, and within 20 minutes, they were wading through knee-high water as they scrambled to their car and fled. They left behind the bronze Cadillac with flecked metallic paint that John’s son gave him as a present. A few days later, they were back with daughter Claudia Miguel to take what they could, leaving dishes and sofas but towing the water-logged Caddy. Everything stank. The trailer had a red tag, and the insulation underneath was soaked through. “They don’t understand they can’t come back here,” Claudia said. “This is where they live. They are attached to it.” Hundreds were displaced in Milliken, and it wasn’t getting much better a week later. The Salvation Army food truck on Broad Street, which began dishing out biscuit breakfasts and lasagna dinners on Sept. 17, still was serving 585 meals a day Sept. 20, said Maj. Terry Wilson, whose rescue team came from as far away as Seattle. At First United Presbyterian Church, on Olive Street, things were just getting going. The church, converted into a supply center, was packed with donated

Residents of Evans gathered — in the hopes of salvaging — some of their muck-covered belongings that they found in the wake of the Flood of 2013. RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post necessities free for the taking — coats, shoes, toys, bottled water, bags of banana peppers and red potatoes. Especially in demand: bras. “It’s awesome to see the hearts of the community open up,” said Becky Selby, the church music director who was suddenly deputized as supply chief. The South Platte River was relentless as it traveled east from there, rounding off the kinky corners and broad curves it carved in the terrain long ago and spreading wider, inundating houses on its banks. Robert Trenary lost his home, as the water ran like a highway right through it — and around it on both sides, high as the window sashes — although he wasn’t there at the time. “I was on vacation,” he said, sitting in his damp backyard staring at his washed-out bungalow, right where the river intersects U.S. 85 in La Salle. “In Missouri on a houseboat.” He can’t help chuckling at that. Staying at the nearby Motel 6 for who knows how long is less funny. No municipality this way suffered as badly as Evans, the next city north. The flood knocked out the sewage-treatment plant, and no one could flush or shower for eight days. At one point during the flood, a levy that held the South Platte in

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Detail area COLO. The Denver Post

place for generations gave way. That created a gap 70 feet long, so wide that a full half of the river, raging at this point, diverted itself right into the town. Two trailer parks and the houses around them were submerged. The river peaked at midnight; it was dark and scary. About 10 p.m., Penny Allen was making an omelette in the kitchen of the house she rents near 37th Street and First Avenue. Things were looking serious outside, but she was determined to sit down and eat her eggs. “By the time I did that, the water was in my front yard.” She grabbed her purse, phone and keys. “And by the time I did that, the water was in my backyard.” She waded to higher ground and went to a shelter at the Greeley Recreation Center a few miles away for the night. Now, she’s staying with her daughter in town, but space is tight and she’s unemployed. The 1994 Toyota pickup she just bought was ruined by the water. Her story of fleeing is common in the area. Richard and Wendy Keith, a young couple with four children, rushed out, with 15 minutes’ notice. As did Kimberly and Randall Bisel, who left with her diabetes medicine but not his oxygen tanks, or their pet rabbit. As did Mike and Barbara Montoya, and they were still at the rec center the following Saturday, eight nights so far on cots. The state sent Evans some help — a Type 3 All-Hazards Incident Management Team, assembled from across Colorado to help the town get back on its feet. Such teams usually stay for two or three days. This one stayed for eight to 10, overseeing the urban searchand-rescue team that scoured the wet trailer parks and the swift-water team that somehow fixed a submerged sewer plant. Residents of the trailer parks can go back to their homes, but only to collect their belongings.

It was scheduled to permanently close to everyone Sunday, as officials sort out long-term health dangers and decide what to do with the land. Safety questions will remain farther east, too, in Kersey. Key roads were wrecked, forcing drivers to go miles out of their way for simple chores for months or years to come. The worst of the flood hit an agricultural neighborhood near county roads 388 and 53, where a dozen houses — robust, old places, wood mostly, and built the early 20th century — were ruined. The water saturated Phillip and Michelle Clark’s place. They took off as the river moved in with a gush so powerful it overturned a deep freezer in their garage, dumping its contents on the floor. Their goats and chickens died, including Frankie, the Guinea hen they raised as a pet and considered a member of the family. “Our animals are still stuck dead in the fence,” Michelle said eight days after the flood, a busy Saturday when neighbors, finally able to return, were scooping soggy dirt, gathering the farm equipment and vehicles scattered around their properties, tossing out their easy chairs and papers, and waiting for FEMA inspections. A few doors down, a volunteer crew in white surgical masks was tearing out the wet floors and walls at Darren and Cynthia Horn’s house. They used backhoes to knock down damaged outbuildings and pick up trash. “I was the last person out before the road washed away,” said Darren, who left just before 6 p.m. Next door, Cynthia’s uncle, 69-year-old David Bond, had maybe the worst night of his life. He spent the afternoon piling sand and gravel at the edge of his drive to keep the water away and hoped that would be enough. “I didn’t think it would come this far,” he said. As other neighbors scattered through the evening, he stayed. But darkness came — as did more water. “It was up to here,” he said, holding his flat hand to his bicep. At one point, he tried to flee by heading out into his backyard and away from the river. But he got stuck in the torrent, and he grabbed a pickup tire to keep afloat. He made his way to a truck and climbed in until about midnight. “I was going to freeze to death and had to do something,” he said. He clomped back across his yard, losing his shoes along the way, and got back to his house, which had 3 feet of water inside. The next morning, Darren Horn came by in a kayak and took him to safety. Ray Mark Rinaldi: 303-954-1540, rrinaldi@ denverpost.com or twitter.com/rayrinaldi