Colorado Flooding Surpasses All Records

Details

Category: World News

Published on Tuesday, 17 September 2013 12:41

Written by Janet Walker

After seven days of rain, Colorado is bracing for the recovery effort in the wake of an apocalyptic storm that left a total of eight dead, hundreds unaccounted for and homes, buildings, bridges and roads washed away.

The usual calm South Platte and La Poudre Rivers, with only pockets of rapids, became raging destruction machines barreling downstream crushing everything in their paths.

State officials have announced over 4500 square miles, virtually the size of the entire state of Connecticut; a 200 mile north to south swath has been affected by the flooding covering 17 counties including Boulder, El Paso, Larimer, Adams, Arapahoe, Broomfield, Clear Creek, Denver, Fremont, Jefferson, Logan, Morgan, Pueblo, Washington, Weld, Sedgewick, Otero and Archuelta counties.

Over 1200 residents of these counties were originally categorized as unaccounted or missing. Since the rain has cleared 648 still remain on the missing list with 567 having made contact with authorities.

Images of uncontrollable devastation have surfaced with uprooted trees, washed out road, homes falling into raging waters, as damages estimates have not yet been tallied.

A total of 11,750 residents were forced to evacuate, presently and with numbers expected to climb once the water recedes 120 homes and buildings have been destroyed and another 130 sustaining damage.

The National Weather Service issued a total of 79 flash flood warnings from Wednesday to Sunday and in that same five day period 61 flash flood warnings were issued for central and northeast Colorado from the Boulder National Weather Service.

As the water ran down the mountains the rivers became torrents of devastation with river banks swelling and flood waters crested early at eight foot, double the height of the last major flood in 1947.

The rain has passed and left behind an obliterated central Colorado. Roads and bridges including  Colorado’s main highway 1-34, between Dam Store and Estes Park, has been washed away in what is being described as the worst flooding since record book were kept.  Thirty bridges are totally destroyed and twenty more sustaining sufficient damage.

By the end of the seven days Colorado residents received a total of 21.13 inches of rain from the stalled weather pattern.  September 2013 total’s precipitation through Sunday was recorded in Boulder as 16.69inches, smashing the previous record of 9.59 inches in May 1995.

Throughout the course of the seven day storm Air National Guard, Coast Guard and other state and local emergency services agencies conducted over 215 air rescues, eleven ground rescues, 120 pet rescues.