From The Greeley Tribune:
Evans officials have inspected nearly 300 homes in the past two days, the majority of which have been deemed uninhabitable.
On Thursday, officials inspected 166 homes in the flood area. Seven homes had moderate damage and were given yellow tags. One home had little or no damage and was given a “green” tag. The remaining 159 residences, all within the Eastwood Village Mobile Home Park, were given orange tags, which means they have severe or complete damage. Orange tags mean the homes are uninhabitable and entering them carries the risk of death or injury. Earlier, inspectors had deemed 104 out of 112 inspected homes uninhabitable.
Thursday’s inspections continued as Evans officials announced they had begun erecting a security fence to protect property in a portion of the evacuated area. The fence will help prevent those who do not live in the area from accessing it. No one will be allowed to enter the fenced area between 8 p.m. and 7 a.m., according to a city of Evans news release.
The enclosed area is roughly bordered by Trinidad Street on the west, Ash Court on the north, a line across private property, which will enclose both the Bella Vista and Eastwood Village communities on the east, and about 39th Street on the south.
Residents will be admitted with proof of residency. Residents will be asked to get essential property as quickly as possible and then leave the area. Residents may enter at a checkpoint at 37th Street and Pueblo Street from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.. Access also depends on the status of the property to be visited, the release stated.
Evans officials also announced on Wednesday that they plan to hold two meetings with residents to help keep residents informed. The meetings will take place at 2 p.m. Friday and 11 a.m. Saturday at the City of Evans Community Complex, 1100 37th St. in Evans. Residents with homes deemed unsafe are strongly encouraged to attend, according to the Evans news release.
“It is imperative that residents with homes that have been identified with yellow and orange tags attend one of the scheduled meetings,” the release stated. Officials from the city, Evans police and fire departments, FEMA, Weld County Department of Public Health, Red Cross, Weld County mental health services, Journey Church and the City of Evans Community Development Department will be on hand to answer questions, according to the release.
From The Greeley Tribune (Analisa Romano):
Jose Sandoval stood knee-deep in murky brown water on Wednesday several feet from his home, where floodwaters still flanked it on all sides.
“See where the water line is?” Sandoval said, pointing to a line of debris just a few inches from the roof of his home at Eastwood Village mobile home park in Evans.
As he pointed, his partner, Ruth Flores, waded up to their now-detached front porch, grabbed a lawn chair and set it against the window so that she could crawl in.
Sandoval had been to the home on Saturday, when he said the water was still chest-deep. He said he didn’t need to go in a second time.
“It’s ugly, ugly in there,” he said. “I’ve seen enough.”
Sandoval and Flores were some of the last people allowed to return to their flood-ravaged homes on Wednesday following the historic natural disaster that slammed Evans, east Greeley and other communities along the South Platte and Poudre rivers in Weld County.
Many lost everything. Some Evans residents on Wednesday stood in their front yards and spoke with their neighbors, while others tried to scrounge whatever they could from their homes.
At a community meeting held by Weld County commissioners Wednesday evening, questions abounded from displaced residents. The flurry of frustrations and concerns varied by the individual, but a central question hung over the heads of the more than 100 people there, as well as those standing helplessly by their destroyed homes: What now?
First and foremost, go to the disaster recovery centers, officials at the meeting said. There, displaced residents should find help from the likes of human services, North Range Behavioral Health, the Red Cross and FEMA. All of those affected by the flood qualify for assistance from FEMA and should register as soon as possible. The Greeley and Weld County housing authorities are gathering lists of landlords with any vacancies, and that information, too, is available at the disaster centers.
Weld County Commissioner Bill Garcia added that flood victims should also look to the faith-based community, namely Journey Christian Church in Greeley, for help.
Rick Hartman, a member of the Weld Faith Partnership Council, said 38 of the area’s church pastors have collaborated to make Journey their main point of contact.
So far, Weld County Commissioner Sean Conway said 685 people have passed through the disaster recovery centers set up in Greeley and the tri-town area. Of those, he said 550 have passed through the one in Greeley. Conway said reports of Boulder’s disaster recovery center show only 12 people passed through, and 10 have been helped in Adams County.
A humans relations representative with JBS USA said the company knows of 49 employees’ families who lost their homes completely.
Making progress
In Evans, Mayor Lyle Achziger said the city sent in a FEMA-certified team to search for people who may have been trapped in the mess and to analyze homes for their safety. All of those homes will be tagged, he said, with green, yellow or orange signs. The orange ones are not safe to live in or enter, he said.
Achziger said the no flush order has been helped greatly by Greeley’s assistance in pumping some sewage through a temporary line, and the 10-day limit is looking like it will come through.
“Folks, I think we’re going to make that,” Achziger said. “It might be tight.”
He said long-term, it looks as though the river has chosen a new course in a few places, which will take some engineering consultations.
In the meantime, he said the city will have to find a short-term fix — something Conway said is on the docket for many Weld County roads and bridges.
He said the county will focus on main roads used by the agricultural industry before fast-approaching harvest time, using whatever fixes are necessary to make those roads passable. Conway said the Colorado Department of Transportation has said it may be able to temporarily fill the section of U.S. 34 between Greeley and Kersey that dissolved in the flood.
Conway said the good news is the county has already repaired 10 roads that were flooded out, and road closures have dropped from 140 to 44. The county configured a map of alternate routes on its website for residents to consult before their commutes.
Commissioners also spoke about steps the county has taken to help flood victims, including unlimited vouchers for one truck full of waste to be taken to the landfill for free and a unanimous resolution commissioners passed earlier in the day that waives fees associated with reconstruction, like building permits and demolition fees, for those affected by the flood.
Fred Stenzel, who lives near LaSalle, stood up to say he had been lucky — he received “unbelievable” help from FEMA.
“There are all kinds of programs that can help you,” he encouragingly told those gathered at the community meeting. “We just have to be patient, and understand that the few of us in here, we are just a small percentage of those who were affected.”
No more tears
Earlier in the day on Wednesday, Flores wasn’t sure she would make it in to see her home.
She was wearing sandals — now the only shoes to her name — when she fled her home on Friday and needed boots to get to the far back corner of the mobile home park, where her family lived.
She and Sandoval ventured through the neighborhood to see how far she could make it in sandals, passing a mud-crusted stroller left in the street, fences folded in on themselves, and abandoned cars.
The neighborhood smelled at times like a lake, at other times a sewage plant. Mosquitoes buzzed over pools of standing water and, in the distance, maintenance workers silently worked on damaged infrastructure under an intense September sun.
“Oh, God, this is chaos,” Flores said. “I don’t even smoke, and I feel like smoking.”
Sandoval pointed to a ravaged home next to him.
“We were just going to do the roof on that, too,” Sandoval said of his work as a roofer. “We had the contract lined up and everything.”
Later, Flores emerged from the couples’ home with little good news. Their five kids, ages 5, 6, 7, 9 and 13, would be disappointed — the Xbox didn’t make it.
“I told my son, put your stuff high up, we’ll be back for it,” Sandoval said.
Flores said her collection of coveted Coach purses were destroyed. It might not even be worth the trip to get the few things that did survive the flood, she said.
“Your orange Converse are good,” Flores shouted to Sandoval from her perch outside of the window. “The bathrooms are both full with (expletive) mudwater.”
Shortly after the pair ventured back from the wreckage, crews dressed in wader pants began knocking on the doors of the mobile homes to be sure no one was trapped inside. Several National Guard trucks lined up on 37th Street, and firefighters stood ready to rinse off the boots of those who trekked through the contaminated water.
Roderigo Corral looked on as they methodically posted bright orange signs on every front door on his street.
“Unsafe. Do not enter or occupy,” they said.
Corral and his mother-in-law sat in their garage, beside heaps of ruined clothes, furniture and housing supplies that they dragged outside. The tree in Corral’s front yard in Riverside Park, just off of 37th Street, had been uprooted and lay across his driveway.
“Everything is gone,” he said.
Every few minutes, a few more people emerged from their homes with a singular box or container, walking silently from their old homes — some for the last time.
Through it all, Flores and Sandoval maintained relatively good spirits. Sandoval even teased Flores as she struggled to conquer a fence and get back to him.
“I gotta get a video, I gotta get a video,” he said, laughing.
Sandoval said Wednesday was a time to see what remained. If the flood took everything, then it’s time to pick up, and move on, he said.
“There’s no more tears to come out.”
From OurThorntonNews.com (Tammy Kranz):</p<
The biggest concern for the city [Thornton] is the breach of one of its 12 dams along the South Platte River, said Emily Hunt, the city’s water resources manager.
“We had flood water overtop five of (the berms) — with one of the five, we had a complete failure of the berm so there’s no separation between the reservoir and the river right now,” she said.
The city isolated the reservoirs, and because the city has multiple water resources the drinking water has not been compromised, Hunt said.
Repairing the breached berm will take six to 12 months and is the top priority for the city. It could take between 18 to 24 months to repair the erosion on the other berms.The flooding in other parts of the city occurred from overflowing streams, backed up sewers and gutters and detention ponds at full capacity and overflowing “Too much rain in such a short period of time left nowhere for the water to go,” [Brett Henry] said…
The city did lose the pedestrian bridge over Grange Hall Creek, and experienced erosion in multiple areas — including losing a portion of the shoulder on 128th Avenue west of Riverdale Road, which exposed a gas line, sewer manhole and a communications conduit — but no roads were lost, he said.
From The Greeley Tribune (Whitney Philips):
Meteorologists predict that river levels across Weld County will continue to drop, slowly but surely over the next few days, and the receding floodwaters have allowed officials to assess and begin to repair damage.
The Poudre River, which peaked at 8.8 feet, is now well below the 8-foot flood stage. Exact levels of the South Platte and St. Vrain rivers are unavailable , since flood waters took out the gauging system, but water levels on both have been dropping and are expected to drop 6 inches per day, said David Barjenbruch, National Weather Service meteorologist.
“They’re still running high, but we’re getting there,” Barjenbruch said, adding that there are mostly dry days ahead.
As waters recede, officials are getting a better look at widespread damage to highways and roads. County and state crews have already begun repairs on roadways they can reach.
In the county, bridge, culvert and pavement crews have been assessing and repairing damage for days. Jennifer Finch, spokeswoman for Weld County, said crews are prioritizing roads that are important to both commuters and farmers.
“It’s also important that we look at the roads that our agriculture producers need to use because it’s harvest season and that stuff is timely,” Finch said.
Still, Finch said, getting travel routes back to normal will be a very long process.
“(Road and bridge crews) also have to be safe, so they’re doing a good job of not rushing it,” Finch said. “We have to be smart about our roads.”
Barriers still in place are there for a reason, Finch said. Some roads may look OK on the surface but could have underlying safety issues.
“That road could give way at any time, but you don’t know standing on top of the road,” Finch said.
While roadways in the county continue to open back up, there’s no such luck for drivers hoping to use U.S. 34 east of Greeley. Colorado Department of Transportation crews were bringing in heavy equipment and assessing the damage on Thursday morning.
They’re working on a plan to build a temporary roadway north of the gaping hole that would remain through the winter months, said CDOT spokesman Bob Wilson. Crews would start long-term construction on the old route in the spring, he said.
“We don’t have any time lines at this point,” Wilson said.
County road closures have inundated major highways, like U.S. 34, Interstate 25 and U.S. 85, with traffic. Officials recommend checking the CDOT and Weld County websites for alternate routes. For example, Wilson suggested taking Colo. 392 or Colo. 14 into Fort Collins, and Colo. 66 into Longmont. Wilson said many state roadways that are closed in the mountains are just fine along the Front Range.
“I know people are frustrated,” Finch said. “We’re all frustrated. We’re all dealing with having to find new ways to get places.”
Evans inspectors have worked to evaluate homes in evacuation areas, the majority of which have been deemed unlivable.
The evacuation order remains in place, as does a curfew from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. in those areas. The no-flush order is also still in effect, as Evans officials work on their plan of pumping some waste through Greeley’s treatment system, though officials say they’re making progress.
Trash pick up in the city will resume as normal on Tuesday.
Finch said inspections have also been completed on some buildings in the county but, of the relatively few homes flooded in unincorporated Weld, most have been deemed OK to live in.
Flood waters also did a number on the Union Pacific Railroad line between LaSalle and Fort Collins. Mark Davis, spokesman for the railroad, said much of the track around the South Platte is still under water, and crews are hoping to get a better look over the next few days.
“Water is still up over there, and we don’t know when that’s going to drop,” Davis said.
Greeley residents may notice rail cars with giant boulders chugging through on the line that runs from Cheyenne to Denver. Davis said those boulders are headed to the mountains to repair major damage to the line from Denver through Moffat on the way to Grand Junction.
With no more flood-related evacuations or rescues anticipated, the county is hard at work in the recovery stage, offering residents services at two recovery assessment centers, one in Greeley and the other in the Tri-Town area. Finch said county officials are doing all they can to get people back in their homes and back on their normal routes, but that process will be much slower than the speed at which floodwaters caused unprecedented damage.
“The recovery is happening, but’s it’s not going to happen at that same pace,” Finch said.