Colorado Floods--Who's affected?

[enipla]

@Johnny_L.A

Just did a search for your posts to see if you were trapped on a mountain. Good to hear you’re not.

Pet a kangaroo for me.

Actually stuck at an airport in Frankfurt. Raining here too. Hope u guys are drying out in CO. We return tomorrow.

[yanceylebeef]

Listening to the weather lady this morning and she mentioned that if this sort of up-slope storm had happened during the winter months with the same amount of precipitation, it would have been over five feet of snow.

Crazy.

[Ludovic]

Will this help the western Southwest at all, reducing the need to pump water across the Rockies to eastern CO? Or is all this water just washing down river and won’t be of any help?

[Mr.Tickles]

I work in Longmont and live due east across I-25. I recorded 11.5 inches of rain Wednesday to Monday, but thankfully we live along a ridge and the sump pit never saw a drop of water. The water main feeding out town was washed out, and while water pressure was restored relatively quickly we were on a boil advisory for several days. The worst, though, is the sheer number of culverts and small bridges washed completely away. My commute into Longmont just tripled in length and quadrupled in time.

That’s all small potatoes compared to Lyons. A good friend is a teacher at the high school there, they expect to not be back in their building (which survived relatively unscathed) for at least 3-4 months.

[Lamar_Mundane]

@yanceylebeef

Listening to the weather lady this morning and she mentioned that if this sort of up-slope storm had happened during the winter months with the same amount of precipitation, it would have been over five feet of snow.

Crazy.

It’d be a lot more than that. The rule of thumb is one inch of water equals one foot of snow. Boulder received over 18 inches of water for the week. That might be the downtown Denver or airport totals she’s talking about.

@Ludovic

Will this help the western Southwest at all, reducing the need to pump water across the Rockies to eastern CO? Or is all this water just washing down river and won’t be of any help?

Colorado’s water is almost to Nebraska already, so no help for the southwest. New Mexico got hammered as well, so that will flow westward and help some.

[lieu]

It’s moved downstream to parts of SE Colorado now. A miles long stretch of our winter pasture straddles the Arkansas River and we got word much of that is underwater. The cattle were moved days ago though so just a lot of fence to rebuild, nothing compared the what dopers around Boulder, Lyons, Littleton and Longmont, etc went through.

[retsin2000]

Hi all,

We live in Lyons but are some of the more fortunate people in Lyons. Our house is safe, we are safe and we should be some of the first people that get to move back home. We spent last night in a hotel and move into an apartment on the 10th. Prior to last night we have been living in our pop-up camper at the Boulder County Fairgrounds in Longmont. That was getting a little old for 2 adults and 2 kids since it was pretty much an RV parking lot.

Yesterday they turned power on in our part of town and since I have electric heat that is a big relief as I was able to turn the heat on. We can come and go to the house during the day as we wish but there is no sewer or water so living there is a little bit of a challenge. Some neighbors are living there but since I have this apartment lined up and we are now in a FEMA assisted hotel and soon a FEMA assisted apartment I think we are going to wait until sewer and water come back.

They are now estimating that we will be able to move home in 4-6 weeks which is quite a bit sooner than first thought. I was hoping to be home by Christmas, now we are hoping for Thanksgiving.

Worse off are my wife’s folks who live in Glen Haven. They had to leave on a helicopter with one backpack each. They are living in Loveland now with no real estimate on when they might be able to return. Next year sometime seems like a fair estimate.

We have been overwhelmed with the generosity of too many people to even try to remember them all. Complete strangers, aid groups, etc. have been amazing. The school district managed to setup a school in Longmont for the Lyons kids so they have been able to stay together. My eldest daughter’s soccer team’s opponent last week made a banner and gave the girls gift bags. The Oregon Duck football team played CU yesterday and brought backpacks and school supplies to the girls’ school.

One shameless charity plug I will make is that if people are looking to help by making donations that they consider the Lyons Community Foundation –> http://lyonscf.org They will be making sure that help gets to the people who really need it.
-Retsin

[retsin2000]

Here is a narrative of our experience during the flood that I wrote and sent as an email to coworkers to avoid having to tell the story over and over. There are spelling and grammatical errors as I wrote it quickly after getting back to work. I also have removed names which may make it hard to read. I thought some might find it interesting.

@retsin2000

9/11 evening – <Wife> goes to her group violin lesson, I put the girls to bed and watch a couple documentaries about 9/11. <Wife>gets home and comments on how hard it is raining. We go to bed. I’m on edge from the 9/11 documentaries and a little bit from the rain because we cut down a lot of vegetation on the hillside next to our backyard. I’m hoping that won’t promote erosion.

9/12 12:30 am or so. <Youngest daughter> wakes us up because she had a bad dream. We get her back to sleep around 1:00 – 1:30.

9/12 2:30 – 4:30 am – The warning system wakes us up. At our house the Lyons warning system is LOUD. I like that. We aren’t worried because our house is quite high from the river. As much as I like to complain about having to walk / ride up our hill I’m really glad for it at this point. I start emailing our friends that live in the south side neighborhood (Lyons Valley) by the high school offering for them to come to our house for safety.

We start getting reverse 911 calls on our cells and land line. Again the system worked very well from my perspective.

If you haven’t registered your cell with the reverse 911 system do it now. https://ww2.everbridge.net/citizen/EverbridgeGateway.action?body=home&gis_alias_id=160781

A little after this I learn from email that our friends in Lyons Valley that no one is getting over the bridges from their side of town to ours. They are pretty much completely cut off. Then our friend <name removed> , who a few of you know, calls to find out what is going on. They live in the Lyons Valley area and had been included in my email. They saw the email when they were woken up by the reverse 911 calls on the cell phones (register now if you are still putting that off.) They are in Jackson WY and are concerned about their house and dogs.

I spend the next couple hours google chatting, texting, talking on the phone, emailing with friends in town. I finally lay down and go back to sleep around 4:00

Quite a few cars up on our street now looking for higher ground. As it turns out folks didn’t need to go nearly that high up as nothing flooded higher than the Stone Cup (High street and 5th Ave if you want to look at a map.)

9/12 – 4:00ish – I get Charles’ email about the situation in Boulder. This gives me a sense that this thing is more widespread than I had been thinking. Not having to worry about how I was going to get to work was also a relief

9/12 4:30am – School district calls to let us know there is no school. Trying to sleep is really pointless at this point but we try and actually succeed.

9/12 8:00ish – I log on, check the build, exchange some work emails. Check online news and start to get a sense that this is a big deal.

9/12 9:30 or so – I ride my bike down into the main part of town to try to find out if the tap water is safe to drink and to get a sense of how things are. I ride over to the cop shop to ask about water, they say best to boil it and I start to head east to get a sense of how bad HWY 66 / 36 is as far as being able to leave. I had earlier seen that leaving wasn’t going to happen soon as the HWY was now part of the river but I wanted to get a closer look. But on the way my friend <name removed> flags me down in the distillery truck and says we are getting the food out of the St Vrain market that is flooding and taking it to the elementary school. I put a video from inside the store in my xfer and I think most of you have seen this. We spend the next 5 or 6 hours making runs from the Market to the school, helping serve meals at the school, etc. At one point we build a water diversion structure out of patio furniture to divert water away from the Lyons Fork, a restaurant in town. It actually seemed to work quite well.

At some point in the early afternoon we lose the water system. I had brought down my big turkey fryer propane burner to boil water at the school but we probably only got 10 or so gallons boiled before the taps went dry.

One kind of funny thing is that there are about 5 of us driving around in the the distillery truck (<name removed> is part owner of the distillery.) We keep going back to the fire station to see what we can do to help. Originally when we asked they said something like “Officially I have to tell you to not try to help.” So we say something like “If there was something you would tell us to not go do, what would it be?” So they tell us “Don’t go do this and then when you are done not doing that, go don’t do this.”

At some point we find out that the veterinary clinic that <name removed>owns in Longmont is also flooded. At this point 3 out of 4 of the owners of the distillery have lost 2 businesses to the flood. Very bad.

9/12 eveningish – I head home as I’m pretty much soaked and getting quite cold. <Wife> heads down to the school to help. At some point she comes home and we head to a neighbor’s house for soup. At this point we still have electricity so we are boiling water on our stove (electric) that I saved before we lost the tap water and I’m collecting rain water in coolers for flushing and drinking if it comes down to it. We also have a big hot water heater and I have iodine tabs, a backpacking filter, and a burner on my gas grill so we feel good about water. Also the National Guard has started to get in and they are bringing limited water.

Our sump pump is going non-stop and there is a rumor that we are going to lose power so I start to try to figure out how to rig a backup system with a marine battery I have for our camper and a computer UPS with a bad battery only to realize that I ggot rid of that UPS a year or so ago. Oh well. At some point in the night we do lose power so I spend the rest of the night worrying, getting up to check the downstairs, basically just not sleeping. I used to like the sound of rain when trying to sleep. So second night with probably 2 hours or so sleep.

9/13 - morning - We get up, talk to neighbors and find out there is a meeting at 9:00 in Sandstone Park. <Wife> goes down and we get a real sense of just how bad and widespread this is. At this point they are evac’ing the people that need it the most and asking people who are self sufficient to shelter in place. We have a ton of food, feel good about our water, etc. so no way we are leaving yet. For the first part of the day they are only evac’ing people with big army trucks and we would really like to take at least one car if possible. Also saying could be a month or more until we can return. We really want more than we can carry on our backs.

Also a big worry is lessened as the Sheriff says they have no worries about Button Rock dam breaking. As there had been at least one other dam break we were worried about this. If you don’t know Button Rock is a huge dam that creates the Ralph Price reservoir, the main drinking water supply for Longmont. If it goes I think our house would still be okay but all of Lyons but a couple neighborhoods would be gone. Because of this fear a bunch of people set up a camp about half way to the “L” on the mountain side on the south side of town.

<Wife> goes to the school and helps out but the operation has pretty much been taken over by the National Guard at this point so she comes home.

9/13 afternoon – since the risk of Button Rock dam is gone we take the kids for a walk, check on some friends, etc. Our friends that own the Lyons Dairy bar have a new giant hole in their yard but they are out with their bicycle ice cream truck giving away frozen treats before the melt. We pick up our water ration and head home. At this point they are letting people with 4 wheel drive leave in their own vehicles. No coming back though.

9/13 evening - We have a big BBQ in our cul-de-sac as everyone has food they will be throwing away soon. There is also a big community BBQ at the Stone Cup that <Youngest daughter> and I go down to for a bit. Probably 200 people there. Good community spirit.

This night I sleep for probably 10 hours straight. There is no rain.

9/14 – 9:00 am community meeting at Sandstone Park again. This time the Sheriff’s Sergeant is clear. We all have to leave. They are worried about disease. We hear again 3-4 weeks before we can move back but that that is a wild guess. It could be much more. They also say that 2 wheel drive cars can go. We decide to leave this day or the next day (Sunday.) Our land line phone never went out (another preachy point, make sure you have one phone that requires no power to work if you have a land line). Also I was able to text the entire time, I just had to be careful about cell battery. I have a solar charger but it was much to cloudy for it to work. I was able to text my brother and he would call the land line with information I needed. Information like weather forecast. When we heard high percentage for rain Saturday night and Sunday we decided to leave Saturday.

We had a lot to do to leave. Not only pack but take all our perishable food to a central drop off so it doesn’t rot in our house, etc. I also hook up our popup camper as we are planning on staying in it.

We take the freshest water we have to our neighbor <name removed> as he is staying as long as he can. He is also going to use the 5 or so coolers / buckets in my front yard full with rain water.

One thing I needed to do was to take the rain water I had been collecting and use it to flush the toilets clean. I was almost done with this when I went into the backyard to get a cooler with about an inch of water in it. I wanted to conserve as much as possible so <name removed> had as much as possible left behind. I stepped down from the little retaining wall to our patio. My foot landed on a small toy tin teapot and rolled hard. It hurt a lot. Thankfully we were probably about 10 minutes from leaving so I go wait in one car while <Wife> finishes up and we leave with both cars and our camper.

Crazy destruction and emotion leaving town.

We go to Lifebridge church evac center, get checked in, eat, and I see a doc about my ankle. She thinks it could be broken but probably not. Says go to get an x-ray if it is the same or worse in a couple days. Also I should stay off it (yeah, right.) We were going to camp in the church parking lot but they are saying go to WalMart (very close) to camp. So we were going to do that when we see <name removed> and his family at the evac center and they say we should stay at their friend’s house with who are out of town until Sunday. We do that but don’t really sleep.

9/15 – We move to the fairgrounds with our camper. It is a good place to be. We have pretty much everything we need, including our own doctor. A family we know from town are also camped there and she is an ER doc. I get another really good night’s sleep.

9/16 – ER doc friend checks out my ankle. She concurs that it is probably not broken and the possible break she was concerned about is definitely intact. She sees no reason for an x-ray as the bone that might be broken she would treat like a sprain anyway.

I come to work and start writing this really long email.

[retsin2000]

Moved home today as about 70% of town got the okay to do so. We now have full utilities! Yeah! We still need to be real light on sending gray water down the drain as the waste water plant comes back on line but I can certainly live with that.

Tonight a scaled back version of our annual Halloween parade is going to be held. This is always a pretty big party and I have a feeling tonight is going to be a little bigger than usual even though it is limited to locals. I think there may be some hangovers at the recovery affordable housing meeting in the morning that I’m going to . Not that I would be one of those people or anything.

Unfortunately 30% of town is still displaced and over 170 houses were damaged or destroyed. We all still have a lot of work to do. This isn’t going to be over for any of us until the last one of us is home. I hope this isn’t a violation of board rules but I’d like to post some links for ways to help. If this is a violation please forgive me and feel free to edit or remove my post mods.

If you are local or want to take a road trip and want to come help physically: http://www.lyonsvolunteers.org/

Lyons Community Foundation provides grants to individuals and organizations: http://lyonscf.org/

Lyons Elementary School PTO lost the ability to have their largest fundraiser of the year because of the flood: Lyons Elementary Needs Your Help | Indiegogo

A local guy set up a website with links to buy gift card for local businesses or make donations: http://kennethwajda.com/lyonsstrong/index.htm

The local chamber of commerce is helping small businesses too: http://www.lyons-colorado.com/

Thanks guys!