After record-breaking floods, many swollen rivers in southwestern Colorado are starting to recede. But recovery from the historic flooding and the damage it wrought may take a long time. Roads remain impassable across much of the region, and Pagosa Springs is largely cut off from the rest of the state, with only one rural highway leading out of town toward New Mexico.
The Rio Blanco River has swamped much of the Last Resort on the River Campground, outside of Pagosa Springs. Some families who live there full-time were forced to leave behind their trailers. Owner Brandi Webb described talking to a young boy who was distraught that they had to flee his home.
He told her: "This is his happy place,” she said, starting to choke up. “And for him to not be in his happy place, it's heartbreaking. It's scary for everyone.”
The swirling brown water consumed all of Webb’s riverside campsites and flooded three of the park’s structures. She estimates she’s had to issue about $5,000 worth of refunds. While being a riverside campground is usually a selling point, this flood has given her another perspective of the usually slow-moving Rio Blanco.
“It leaves you in awe of how quickly things can change and how powerful the water itself is,” she said.
The nearby San Juan River rose to nearly 17 feet, the highest it's been since 1911. This follows a previous round of disastrous flooding that hit Southern Colorado just over a week before. On Saturday, Gov. Polis requested federal disaster funds for those floods.
The Red Cross has opened three evacuation shelters across the region.
Roads and bridges washed away
In downtown Pagosa Springs, floodwaters washed away the ground under the Pagosa Springs Museum and forced the closure of a bridge. U.S. 160 is closed on either side of the small town.
To the west, floodwaters so badly damaged a bridge over San Piedra River that the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) is calling it a “bridge failure. They won’t have a workable replacement for a week or two.
The state and local highways that crisscross southwest and south-central Colorado are essential to this area, explained Lisa Schwantes, a public information officer for CDOT.
“This is how we get our freight, our supplies, our medical needs. It's how we get our tourists and visitors that visit the area — that is a huge economy for us,” she said, adding that the roads are also vital for moving hay and livestock to the many agricultural communities that dot this part of the state.
Wolf Creek Ski Area, which opened on Halloween, has temporarily shut down due to the impassable roads.
Road crews are working hard to clear U.S. 160, as well as U.S. 550 outside of Hermosa, U.S. 285 north of Monte Vista, Colorado State Highway 112 north of Del Norte, State Highway 17 west of Antonito and State Highway 151 south of Chimney Rock.
“We're trying to get them open as quickly as possible, even if it's to one lane of alternating traffic, so that we can keep travelers and our residents moving through our region,” Schwantes said.
Farther to the west, flooding on the Animas River hit Durango hard, with water running nearly 13,000 feet per cubic second — about 50 times the typical flow. Photos shared with CPR News show homes and yards filled with several feet of water and mud.
Some areas that braced for terrible impact were largely spared, however. The entire community of Manassa, which flooded last week, was told to evacuate. The owner of a local restaurant, however, said he and many other locals had decided to stay, and his business was mostly continuing as usual.
In the little town of Mancos, residents and business owners had fortified historic buildings with sandbags against the river by the same name. On Sunday, John Bradford was in the basement of the building that houses the Sun Dog Gallery, which he manages. As the river rose, “you could hear the water splashing on the side of the wall,” he said.
Only a bit of the “really dark, muddy water” seeped inside, Bradford went on. On Monday, he was busy cleaning up an inch or two of mud.
“We were really lucky,” he said.
The forecast for the rest of the week
The National Weather Service forecasts that rain will mostly stop throughout the region. A quick-moving storm could blow through high elevations on Wednesday, bringing snow and light rain, but meteorologist Gillian Harrison explained that shouldn’t lead to any additional flooding.
“We have many of our rivers of concern in southwest Colorado … decreasing gradually over the next few days,” she said.
That’s good news for residents and business owners trying to get back to normal life after back-to-back floods. The Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad, whose tracks from Durango to Hermosa were damaged Sunday by floodwaters, said service should resume as normal once winter trains start up later this month.
In Pagosa Springs, campground owner Webb is heartened by how much her community is supporting one another. People are checking on their neighbors, offering help — and asking for it, too.
“I'm seeing an overwhelming amount of neighbors reaching out and saying, ‘Hey, here's my wifi. Who can check on my goats? Who can help me with my horses?’ And people are responding,” she said. “So as much as we are feeling isolated, we know that we're not alone.”