Happy Summer Solstice! Feeling the heat yet? It's been PRETTY dang hot here in Louisville lately. So to cool you off a little, I thought I'd share my pictures from the CO flood from September last year.
It had been only three days since we had gotten back from our Alaska vacation when the rain started. I was still unemployed and therefore...not going outside much. A couple days into the storm I got three text messages from various family members asking about my safety and housing conditions. You can imagine my confusion receiving these messages from the comfort of my cozy townhouse. Even when I peered out the window it really didn't look bad. I mean it wasn't like a Houston downpour. More like a like steady drizzle from Seattle. So what was the problem?
The problem was right outside my door.
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| grass lawn outside townhouse |
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| Left Hand Creek two blocks from our house |
The problem was that we weren't in Seattle, a mountainous city with lakes and the Puget Sound to put the water. We were in Boulder County, the valley adjacent to the Rocky Mountain National Park, where the storm had been raining hardest, and where the water was inadvertently coming.
The problem was that evening when I got a rather alarming call from my husband informing me he hydroplaned into a ditch while going under the speed limit and totaled our precious 1991 sea foam green Ford Contour.
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| 2nd Street two blocks from our house |
The problem was the following day when Trent couldn't go to work because of all the road closures (a rather convenient problem).
The problem was the thousands and thousands of people evacuated from their homes. The closed grocery stores, gas stations, fast food chains. The debris from the storm clogging all the drainage systems. The sewage system that broke in one of the mountain towns and filled the flooded water with our own waste.
It was so overwhelming to see the flood and the many people affected by it. But what was more overwhelming was the love in the community to comfort, uplift, and serve one another. Because Trent and I were not affected (aside from the totaled car) we had several opportunities to give. We gave clothes, essentials, and towels. We gave our time on the weekends visiting Lyons and cleaning up many of the homes literally packed with sludge and mud. Though many people laughed at our great timing moving to CO, and yes the circumstance were dismal, the flood gave us a chance to build friendships quick and get immersed in the community.
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