Colorado DUers please check in and tell us if you and yours are OK

[truebluegreen]

30. Re-posting this from a previous thread:

Boulder is my home town, although we are not living there now. This is what some friends of ours went through.

We finally got a hold of John last night. He and his wife live on the banks of Left Hand Creek on the plains 5? 7? miles from the mouth of the canyon. The creek runs along the south side of the 7-acre property and is lined by cottonwoods. Just north of the creek is John's shop, where he has woodworking tools, machine tools, all kinds of stuff. Fifteen feet north of that is a shed with lumber, doors, windows, building supplies, farm equipment. After another gap of 25 ft you find the attached garage, and two-story house. Behind all this is their organic farm (if society collapses John's the guy you would want in the foxhole with you--Mennonite background; can make / build / grow anything). The access road crosses the creek and runs along the west side of the property, the driveway is close to the creek and then curves left to the house.

A flash flood came down Left Hand Canyon in the middle of the night on Wednesday, with a big surge that took out the cottonwood trees (and, apparently, flattened our old driftboat; nobody has had time to look). It was still raining though, and the water kept coming. Debris was catching on the bridges above and below the property. Along the road in front of the house are more big trees, a hedge and a fence. John wedged scrap wood all along there and built the beginnings of a dam--debris from the floodwaters would eventually fill it in.

Something similar happened along the banks of the creek, although without design: pallets, wood, anything and everything that came down the creek jammed up against the fallen cottonwoods and their root balls. Unfortunately the bridge also created a dam and the water was high enough to top the knee wall (lower part of the railing) on the bridge and spill off to each side. The next available escape route was right down the driveway. John used his small tractor to build up two berms, one on either side, that directed the flow between the shop and the shed, into the fields and eventually back into the "creek" (it is a river now).

In front of the garage doors he built a barrier with a 16" glulam beam and sand bags, big rocks, whatever he could find or move, to direct the water back to the right and around into the field. The water came to within an inch of the top. If it had gone over, or if the dam had collapsed, water would have flowed straight down the basement stairs and filled the place up. It didn't, but it did cause the septic tanks to back up, and John and his wife spent 5 hours overnight Thursday bailing buckets of sewage out of the downstairs bathtub and hauling it outside. All of this was done without power, and only candles, flashlights and headlamps for light.

But. No water damage in the shop; nothing ruined in the shed, no more than a bucketful in the garage. The generator is running a sump pump for the septic tanks, to relieve that problem. Half the field was scoured of crops and topsoil, but the rest is still there, and the greenhouses.

John says he is more tired than he has ever been in his life.