September 12 is a touchy date around these parts. Sure on Tuesday the whole country was focused on the events of 17 years ago, and how they changed the way we see the entire world, bifurcating it to "before" and "after" forever. But 5 years ago, on Sept 12, my adopted home town was quite literally bifurcated, into "one side of the river" and "the other side," and good luck finding a way across for several days on end. The northern Colorado floods were national news for about a week. I was living in South Carolina at the time, watching the TV broadcast of a crashed minivan in rushing floodwaters where a bridge washed out in Broomfield, emotionally overwhelmed by the drama of the driver being pulled out alive. I was glued to raw footage of a ladder truck rescuing flood victims in Boulder, watching them filing one by one horizontally across the ladder that spanned a berm, slowly realizing that I knew the intersection where they were filming, and it was where I owned two condos at the time, housing both of my daughters. I turned off the livestream seconds before my older daughter traversed the ladder to safety. It was a harrowing time to be a mother 2/3 of the way across the country, and in the weeks and months that followed, it was a financially devastating time to be a property owner and landlord.
My daughter shared a photo she had taken as the flood waters first seeped up through the drain on her patio, of her own legs ankle-deep in the rush of water. I clearly remember her first phone call to me, even though I had taken a Benadryl and just fallen asleep in a haze. She told me there was an inch or two of water in the condo, and I was groggy and thinking couldn't it wait until morning. I mumbled to her something soothing to get off the phone, and then my survival instincts kicked and and woke me the hell up. I called her back and started barking out orders, like get the computers up off the floor, and make sure they're unplugged. I may have been slow to wake up to the threat, but I did everything I could to get out to Boulder within a couple of days, thinking I could help with cleanup. I brought my brother out too, and neither of us were useful at all. The HOA had to hire a professional crew to rip out anything and everything from the condos. Every first floor unit was damaged. It was a monumental undertaking, and it was something like 14-16 months before we were able to retake possession. My children are still scarred from the whole experience. My younger daughter never really liked dark water to begin with. This cemented that phobia. The older daughter was traumatized well beyond the initial days of flooding and dangerous rescues from chest-deep water (she was helping down the hill at the lower buildings, and thus needed the ladder truck to escape with the residents of the buildings east of hers).
Yesterday at Rotary, one of the recent club presidents led our "moment of inspiration." She acknowledged that 9/11/01 was covered well enough the week before, and she wanted to share her experiences from 9/12/13. She played a video that her husband had taken while she was down in Denver at a conference. The story is that he heard a loud boom in their basement, and he slung his iPhone on a strap around his neck and went to check it out. The video was bouncy, but clearly showed the water coming in their basement door, at that point about 3 feet deep. She said water filled the basement to 4 inches from the ceiling within 5 minutes. He went to the front and back doors, and the video showed the entire street flooded, the backyard a swiftly flowing lake. The fence was breaking apart.
Five years down the line, this town is mostly recovered, but not every project is completed. A month ago I attended the rededication of a pedestrian bridge, over the St Vrain, in open space that required significant flood remediation. They have widened the channel across town, so that future floodwaters will have somewhere to go other than up and over the banks, washing out bridges and homes. Only part of the project is complete. Just today I drove past the next section under construction, where trees have been uprooted, and several giant slash piles line the riverbank. It's possible that we won't be done with all of the public works for another 5 years or more. I am glad they are putting in the work now, before the next major weather event. Even if the next 100 year or 400 year flood event takes that long to come around, I'm happier to be ahead of the game.
I don't have flood photos. Have a trio of Rabbit and Harvey being snuggly instead.
No comments:
Post a Comment