Colo floods

I'm surprised no one has posted anything from the area.

The biggest surprise to me wasn't that canyons have flash floods but that the bridges over the rivers down in the flats have proven to be too short.

Movement N-S thru the affected areas has been difficult as flood waters overtopped bridges that span gulleys that have been known as seeps or dry as long as anyone can remember.

Authorities have responded in well-organized ways and the police/fire/NG comms interoperability has worked really well.
Since the emergency covers so many jurisdictions mutual aid was difficult.

Agencies ran out of barriers to post to prevent people driving into overtopping waters. They also ran out of people to man barricades.

And people came out to stand on the compromised bridges and play in the water......

My long commute to/from work entirely thru the affected area will be more difficult in future. But that's peanuts compared to coworkers who lost their houses or will have to leave their houses for the winter after they are helo'd out.

Glad you are OK. I hope our other members from that area come out OK too!

When things settle down a bit, I hope some of you folks from that area can post some more details about your experiences, and lessons learned for the rest of us.

I thought I had seen a post last night here but when I went back this morning to read it, I could not find it. Maybe it was somewhere else.





Apparently they have nothing better to do with their time.

My first cousin and her husband live in Jamestown. The are okay and their home is intact, being offset from Main St and on the opposite side of the road from the creek. And I hear they refused to leave ; ).

Most of us think about the obvious things to prep with. Water, food, clothing, etc. But one thing that caught my eye in the recent floods that I do NOT currently prep for is the destruction of sewage systems. It's bad enough when it backs up into your basement. But then the authorities pronounce a "no flushing toilets for 10+ days" order on the community.

I hadn't previously thought about THAT particular problem...

The problem here now is infrastructure destruction. Many people lost their homes in the initial flooding. Now there will be long term problems due to road and bridge damage, beyond the initial personal property loss.

One of my coworkers lives up in Pinewood Springs.

Pinewood is uphill from Lyons which has been wiped out/ roads destroyed uphill and down from there.

And it's south of Estes Park which is isolated by both highways to it being destroyed.

While Estes Park has a paved escape to the west via the 12,200' (winter is coming!) Trail Ridge Road thru Rocky Mtn National Park Pinewood is cutoff by yet another destroyed road between Pinewood and Estes.

Given all the road repairs that will be needed to restore access to Pinewood, I expect that he'll have to close down his home for winter and leave either via helo lift or by tortuous 4WD roads that will only be allowed to be 1-way.

Not many people are really setup to winter at 9,000' with no access except by muletrain. And muletrains are in short supply.

I also expect that the winter propane deliveries haven't been made up there .... and so on.

Hard, hard decisions ahead.

It's hard to be surprised by a flood in CO unless you are *really* not paying attention. I chose my location (Denver suburb) on a lot of things, and altitude was one of those. Many people love to live in the canyons, despite all the recent history.

It's not rocket science. You can get maps of flood plains from any county office, and canyons are an obvious no-no...

in case any of the younger set missed the nuance of the opening scene of Apocalypse Now.....to dispose of human waste, Army style... cut the bottom 1/3 off a 55gal drum.... weld on a couple of "U" shaped handles... place under your "one holer" latrine... when about 1/3 filled, remove, wait for the wind to be in a direction other than your hooch, add a gallon or so of diesel fuel, and light....

A few years back when the Howard Hansen dam up in the Cascades was at risk of failure in a major storm, flooding the Kent Valley, one of the major risks to my home in Bellevue was sewage backflow all the way from the sewage treatment facility five miles away - my house was well out of the flood plain, but the force of the floodwaters hitting the sewage facility could force sewage back along the pipes into every house connected for miles and miles. We had a sewage backflow value installed to prevent that. No flood, fixed dam, problem solved - at a modicum of cost I had some additional peace of mind against the worst case.

I have a backup bucket toilet with bags and chemicals designed for emergencies, but if we became subject to a "no flushing" order for any length of time we'd be bugging out if at all possible.

? No one knows how to dig a latrine?

I do! As an experienced field archaeologist, I guarantee it will be a thing of beauty. I had the same thought.....

Didn't say I didn't know how to dig a latrine. It's just that I've never applied that particular skill to my front lawn.

Do it in back, in the garden. Your tomatoes will flourish.....

Firestone has restored safe water supply.
Some areas don't yet have sewer and are using porta-johns.

My coworker who was stranded at Pinewood Springs found a 4WD route out but it was a 1-way trip trespassing over private land. It's unknown what temporary arrangements can be made. He surely won't be commuting daily out of there.

Hwy 7 mudslide that was blocking Estes Park has been cleared and the town has "unlimited" access to try to save the tourist season. However the route to Estes Park starts in Central City and winds a long way on a paved twisty road to Estes Park. (it's a great motorcycle ride on a nice day - did it 3 weeks ago. Two of those canyon roads are now gone.)

Roads up the other canyons are being surveyed as to how to restore access. The good news is that winter is the low waterflow season. The bad news is that winter brings snow and ice and very cold temps which impedes paving. So access may be gravel/dirt for quite a long time once restored.

Other road damage is causing serious traffic issues for the remaining routes because the traffic now has to concentrate onto what remains.

Problems resulting from that are caused both by simple volume, sightseers slowing to see debris near the bridges during daylight hours, and traffic signals that have not been readjusted for the new traffic patterns.

It's not uncommon to have traffic backed up a mile on the interstate trying to get thru a signal light that only allows 8 cars per cycle even though one of the main directions given priority at the intersection is completely blocked (and will remain so for weeks/months).
State Troopers will sometimes get out of their cars and manually direct at those intersections but I can't tell if any of the light sequences and timings have been altered yet. (ya, I know they are kinda busy)

Patience is the word of the day and folks are generally well behaved but instances of a few trying to make 90 mph among the 50mph dense traffic is alarming. I hope Darwin takes care of them quickly.

Thanks unimogbert for the updates. I've been following the story as closely as I can from up here in AK. I lived in Denver for a few years back in the early 1980's, and spent some time climbing and hiking in Boulder and other areas. I've been back through there a few times since. Very tough times for Coloradans.

I did some web surfing and just found that The Atlantic has some really sad photos and an article on the flood:

Historic Flooding Across Colorado Photos during the flood

Colorado Flooding: After the Deluge More photos, from after the flooding

From Boulder, Colorado: Notes on a Thousand-Year Flood One woman's experiences

The photos really drive home the scale of destruction.

Very thoughtful material. I too have spent some time in Boulder. The pictures look like a different planet.

AKSAR - those are really great pictures and The Atlantic seems to be a classy act.

Pics I've been seeing are packaged with twitching, wiggling, slow-to-load extra whirlygigs on the local media pages which is really annoying. The local media seem to be in the mode of being first to say 'gee-whiz' rather than giving a good picture of the damage.

News reported last night that US 34 from Loveland to Estes Park has 85% of the road surface damaged. While I've stopped thinking the media are in the ballpark, the pix suggest that in order to restore 34 the road will have to be built starting in with filling at the bottom and they'll have to fill their way up the hill.

Meantime 36 needs similar work and 119 Boulder canyon needs work and Left Hand Canyon needs work and roads and bridges out in Weld county need work and so forth.

At least the low water flow season is here......

Went for a motorcycle recon this afternoon and found that several of my alternative routes have been restored. One of them goes over a bridge where I could stop and ogle. Amazing power that water has when it gangs up on you....

The roads departments are working hard to restore things. I'm happy they are.

We still don't know a lot about the canyons but I'm sure work is proceeding as quickly as they can do it.

But winter is coming. Cold front with snow line at 10,000'.

The flood that took out the town near where I grew up wasn't directly because of the water. it was the debris that the water carried until stopped at a bridge. People said it looked like a beaver dam. Then the water would rise and eventually be too much for the bridge that was designed to be a bridge and not a dam and the whole thing would give and that pile of mess would go down steam and take out the next bridge, one after the other.

After Sandy came through we were under a "no flush" order for about a week in Long Beach, NY.

National Guard came through and put a porta-potty on every street corner, with a huge number of them set up at city hall.

It was interesting times. . .

I had even more interesting times during my conscript time. At the army training ground the only outhouse looked a bit like this. Several "holes" in a row. No privacy there...

In any military establishment, privates are not privy to privacy....Your woodwork is of a far higher standard than the usual US latrine.

The biggest surprise to me in all of this is that they are rebuilding in the same location. Same comment for New Orleans.

Hey, if we get flooded out, maybe we should pick another place to live! What a concept...