In all my thirty-two years of living in Colorado I have never seen so much water fall from the sky. Some say it was Biblical and I would agree...I kept waiting for the Arc to show up so I could sail away from the craziness...
Thankfully, Broomfield is located in a flood free zone and besides our sump pump working overtime and our backyard becoming a swimming pool, we experienced no water damage, no power outages - nothing! But Longmont, where I work, was a totally different story. The shop where I work is located only a couple blocks North of the St.Vrain River and on Thursday morning we were asked to evacuate our building as the flood waters were starting to breech Main Street.
By 5:00pm the flood waters had completely covered the railroad tracks that run in front of our shop and the water had crept up to within a foot of our front door...but the rain kept falling and surges of water from up the river in Lyons kept flowing down...
By 8:30 Friday morning this was the view of the shop...
and by Friday at 4:00pm the flood water had receded about a foot...
On Saturday afternoon, Don was finally able to go back to the shop and survey the damage. Only about a 1/2" of water made it into the shop and showroom, but left a thick layer of mud. The parking lot and bone yard was also covered in thick, deep mud, random trash cans, tires, trash and other debris. It pretty much looked like a bomb went off!
The vans and air compressor suffered the most damage.
The parking lot where we keep the vans is about 4 feet lower in elevation then the shop, so flood waters and mud filled the engines and cabs up to their dashboards.
The air compressor was completed submerged in water, which is no good given the entire shop operates off of it...
Inside of a van...
Our cabinet trailer acted like a boat and floated out of its parking spot, through the gates and into the middle of our main parking lot. It's amazing it didn't smash into anything...
I'm sure Don's heart sank when he first saw everything - I know mine did!
It was such a mess and we were just surrounded by devastation, but we were lucky that our shop and showroom suffered no damage considering what our neighbor's properties looked like.
We spent Saturday, Sunday and Monday shoveling and cleaning mud out every corner it made its way into - Mud is the hardest thing in the world to remove!
The air compressor made a full recovery with a little work from the maintenance guy so by Wednesday the shop was up and running again - AMAZING!
The vans were a different story - Don was able to get one up and operable, but the other two are still in the repair shop. Its amazing how crucial those vehicles are to the operation of our business.
Hopefully, by next week all the vans will be operating and we will be 100% Back in Business!
It's still amazing to me how lucky we were, because the neighbors that sit right below us and behind us have lost everything. On Monday it felt like a war zone around Longmont, with the National Guard roaming the streets, debris and mud everywhere and helicopters landing every hour with hundreds of evacuees! I was very impressed though by how kind and helpful people were. We had several people whom we never met stop by to help shovel mud, pick up debris and also one lady brought us pizza. Don thankfully will make a quick recovery, but that's not the case for so many other people...
On Friday night as I was glued to the television watching the entire Front Range get flooded and as the road closure of Baseline and Cherryvale came ticking across the screen I immediately thought about our camper out at the lake and thought for sure it was floating down the Boulder Creek, or sunk!
Matt went out there as soon as they opened up the roads and found the water had made its way to the steps of our camper, but thankfully not in it and it hadn't sunk in the mud yet!
Hopefully when we go to pick it up in the next couple weeks to store it for the winter we'll be able to move it...
Living in Colorado we are all to familiar with snow days and I've had plenty of those in my days - Blizzards are normal around here...but a "RAIN" day? Never had one of those during my school days and Ashtyn just had four RAIN days in a row! Boulder Valley Schools were out Thursday to Tuesday so they could get all the schools back into operation. The Ed center in Boulder had major damage which controls all the technology and communication for the schools, so they couldn't operate until that was back up and running. We definitely took advantage of the "RAIN" days...
We went and finally saw Planes at the Flatirons Theaters - FYI this theater is awesome now that they've installed recliner chairs! I've never been so comfortable at the movie theaters!
We played in the rain, jumped in puddles, watched movies at home and I did some major "fall" cleaning and organizing of our closets.
My thoughts and prayers go out to everyone that has been so devastated by this horrible flood. I wish everyone affected a quick recovery and hopefully Colorado will bounce back quickly and be more beautiful then EVER!
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