Recovery
Ten days ago, my town experienced the worst flooding in its entire existence. City leaders declared this a 500-year flood event, and the damage to our town was moderate to severe. As of today, most roads are re-opened, and only one area remains evacuated – a trailer park that was pretty much the lowest point in our town. Only two or three roads are still closed, and those are areas where the flooding obliterated a bridge. People are mucking out, and the city is helping by providing dumpsters and large pickers and dump trucks. They are also rebuilding roads. Less than a week after the flooding, they were laying new road bed, and the next day, paving over that new road bed, on a major east-west route through town. By Friday, state officials had repaired the breached Highway 119, our major eastern gateway to the Interstate. City officials have been working to restore complete water resources (we are operating on only 1/3rd of our usual water supply) and using large equipment to route the river back into its channel. They had the wastewater plant, which had to be shut down during the height of the flooding, back in operation within 48 hours of shutting it down.
This progress is remarkable. The state, and all of the counties affected, have been active in returning things to normal. Three major routes into the mountains have massive levels of destruction. Entire towns are virtually cut off from the rest of the world, including big towns like Estes Park. With winter weather about to descend on the mountains, the clock is ticking with what can be done before heavy snow arrives. Even today, the 22nd of September, there is snow above 9000 feet. Light snow, but still. The state has committed to having all three of these routes completely repaired by December 1st. This is an ambitious goal, but knowing my state, it can be done. Using Federal disaster aid, as well as the state’s contingency funds, they are already bidding out the work and hope to see repairs commence within a week. Considering we can have snow in my town before Halloween, they’d better get moving.
This past week has been difficult for me on a personal level. I have been through flooding before, but I’m from a place where flooding is common, even the norm, and affected areas were miles from me. It didn’t affect my daily routine, I didn’t have to worry about how I was going to get out of town, or back in, or how I was going to get to work. This time, the flood was right down the street. I could walk to it. Places that I visited often were under water. Routes to my favorite stores were closed. The specter of only being able to shop at Walmart and not being able to get to work loomed large. The pictures, videos, and sheer volume of people being evacuated to areas of town that were higher up was overwhelming at times. It gave me the strangest feeling of claustrophobia. I watched it rain from my home office window, my daughter watching movies on the tv behind me, and wondered more than once how we would recover from this as a community. It was a helpless feeling. A powerless feeling.
As I watch us recover, I’m proud to be a citizen of Longmont. Our town officials have worked day and night to protect people, and to restore city services as fast as they could. “Normal” was what they were aiming for, and they did it quite well. Years of city planning, flood plain studies and control measures, and keeping the best and brightest employed at the civic center had made our recovery steps possible. There is still much to do, and I still see oddities as I drive about (refrigerators floating in mud, a highway sign sitting on its side between the splits in two tree trunks, a fiberglass bathtub on the side of the road). Mud drying into dirt means we are under a constant haze of dust as cars make their way around town. Fencelines are solid with debris, and every rain cloud that goes by makes us all hold our breath. But “We Are Longmont Strong,” and we will be fine. We will survive, and we will thrive. It’s what Coloradans do.
