A somber afternoon in Lyons

Nine months ago the Estes Park area was devastated by its most heavy rains, and then flooding, in decades.  The largest town worst hit was Lyons, primary entrance to the Rocky Mountain National Park and the camping and resort town of Estes Park. Though all communities down this valley from the big Thompson River in Estes Park to Longmont on the flat prairie below had some damage, much of it severe, Lyons is where two branches of the St. Vrais creek come together. Right in the center of town.

Our first look at the loss came in a pretty expected way if you know our habits.  We were looking for the library.  But the library was gone- at least the inventory. The only books inside the locked doors of this quaint creek side building were sealed in boxes marked BOOK SALE.

We found the new location of the library, two blocks up on the higher ground of Main street, in a one room empty store. Apparently Google Maps had not been updated to this change yet.

A collage from the town museum

Today we saw, and were allowed to see, only a small part of the devastation in Lyons.

One poignant area of stony beach we did see had a heart above the word LYONS spelled out in flood tossed rocks.

On June 24, 2014, Jane Pittman reported on a meeting of researchers, academics and practitioners in natural disaster response. This gathering takes place annually in Broomfield, a town just downriver from another canyon devastated by the tremendous flooding of 2013. Boulder, the canyon our son lives near the top of, in the village of Nederland.

While Ms. Pittman's synopsis is fully reported here  http://www.emergencymgmt.com/disaster/6-Takeaways-Colorados-Devastating-Flooding.html  These are the six key takeaways this years discussions realized from the 2013 Eastern Slope disaster.

1-Alerts must be specific.  Not color coded, or otherwise ambiguous.  As I type tonight much of the North Carolina coast is under hurricane watch, or worse.  When the order comes to evacuate, their can be no 'maybe' about it.
2-Work together. The old argument in business is that the ones who research and make the products and the ones who sell them never get together to discuss how to make and sell them best.  That must change in disaster relief, and prediction too.  Researchers and government agencies must work more closely together to avoid possible added disasters from miss-communication.
3-Plan for the BIGGEST, not just the BIG one.  Of course you can't so overbuild that nothing can afford to be built at all but even the ongoing flood mitigation plans in Boulder and Lyons just were way too little too late for the floods of 2013.
4-Community education is key. Why should Grandma and Grandpa, who have lived along the creek, or on the Outer Banks, for 50 years trust your evacuation notice today? And educate way before the education is needed.
5-Don't forget your pets.  Over 2,000 people lived in Lyons before the flood, but so did over 3,000 dogs and innumerable cats, gerbils, hamsters, etc.  pet rescue is not as critical as human rescue, but it comes a close second. Just ask any of those rescued who lost their pets in the raging waters.
6-Do the math. Almost a year later several hundred of Lyons families are still in temporary housing.  Compared to the thousands in New York state and New Jersey still out of their homes since Hurricane Sandy struck their Atlantic coasts in 2012. Recovery is not just about persons and pets.  Its about homes.

We met a family a couple of weeks ago living in their RV.  They were full-timing it, but not like us. They had lost their home and job in Sandy and were still hoping to go home.  And their home was not the fifth wheel they'd been living in for over a year.

Lyons is not new to floods.  There have been several, even many.  But none like the one of 2013.  Huge increases in home building, paved highways and other permeable surface and green growth destruction is partly to blame.  but all growth requires sound planning, and worst case scenario thinking well before the worst case happens.

For now, the people we talked to at the local ice cream shop, the museum, and elsewhere, are working as strong as they can to bring Lyons not only back, but better than ever.

The tourist trade in the Rockies isn't getting any lighter, so that should help in the long haul. But meanwhile, those hundreds of families still without homes could use some prayers.

-Ken