Part 8 – Friday 13th September, 2013–The Flood Continues

Part 8 of An Attempt to Live a Normal Life – (Originally posted on my (then) ‘Homeless and Female’ blog in 2013).

On Friday 13 of September, the flood waters reached their peak and did most of the damage. They rushed down the canyon, washed away homes, cars, and lives. They undercut, roads, hillsides and foundations, and the areas that were already weakened by the two previous days of flooding, were destroyed.

Towns like Glen Haven, Drake, Pinewood Springs, Lyons, and Estes Park, which are in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, were cut off from the rest of the world. Pinewood Springs acquired a new name, The Isle of Pine, and the only way to get in and out was by helicopter or on foot. Glen Haven was so badly damaged, that the little town was almost wiped off the map, and was also cut-off. Only two buildings remained standing, plus the new firehouse and post office. Fortunately they managed to get the fire trucks and equipment out of the old firehouse before the entire building was washed down the canyon, along with most of the other businesses. Other towns like Lyons were also cut off, but as they were closer to a larger infrastructure, got help quicker. At the time we did not know how bad things were down in the canyons, as Estes Park (being at a higher elevation and quite literally, the end of the road) was in the blind. Clouds hung low, and helicopters couldn’t fly, power lines, networking cables and the like had been washed away, landlines and cell phones did not work, even the emergency services had a hard time staying in contact.

People drove around town in circles to gawk at the dangerous flood waters, as there was no way in or out. Many of the shelves on the grocery store were empty, and there were no food deliveries coming to town, no mail deliveries, and even if there had been a way to get it to Estes Park, the area around the Post Office was flooded.

At this time Estes Park residents didn’t have a very good idea of what was going on down the canyon, or out along the Front-Range (Boulder, Loveland, Fort Collins). A few had TV, and there was radio, but my friend and I were out of the loop. We did know it was bad, we knew that all the water that had come from the mountains this town nestled beneath had gone out to the Colorado plains, and that the cities in-between had been slammed by the surge, but exactly how bad, we didn’t really know.

Friday the 13th was a bad day to go out and explore, and there wasn’t really anywhere to go anyway, so I stayed home.

Homeless Gal

Originally written and posted in October 2013 on my (then) ‘Homeless and Female’ blog.

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Looking back on the year 2013, The Year of the Floods, and enjoying a nomadic lifestyle all the more because of it,

Roxy ~ A Nomad for Nature

 

http://NomadforNature.wordpress.com/