Hesperus – The La Plata River overflowed into a 28-home trailer park early Wednesday after cottonwoods along its badly eroded banks crashed into the channel and dammed it.
The river, just at its peak with spring runoff, changed its course to flood the Pine wind Trailer Park with murky water several inches deep.
Residents of the park were awakened sometime after 2 a.m. by the sound of the water gushing through one section of an earthen berm running along the edge of the park. Hesperus is a few miles west of Durango.
“I just shot up in bed when it burst. Then I heard the water,” said resident Theresa Carson, who moved into her home right next to the berm three weeks ago.
The biggest fear Wednesday was that the breached berm, about 4 feet high and roughly 200 feet long, would collapse altogether, allowing the widening lake behind it to pour in and perhaps dislodge trailers, mobile homes and propane tanks.
“If that berm breaks, we’ll have a hellacious situation,” park owner Bill Westendorff said. “That small trailer will turn into a boat. I don’t even know if I have flood insurance.”
Flood warnings and watches are in place across western Colorado as abundant mountain snowpack melts under a week-long heat wave.
In Archuleta County, the search continued for a 19-year-old camper feared drowned. The local man, whose identity was not released, had a campsite Sunday night along the Rio Blanco.
County emergency manager Greg Oertel said it appears that a portion of saturated and battered riverbank near the camp caved in during the middle of the night.
Oertel said the flooding Rio Blanco hit its peak early Wednesday, but the water is still too high to allow residents to return to 12 homes evacuated Monday along County Road 335.
At the Hesperus trailer park, Westendorff struggled all Wednesday morning to find a heavy- equipment operator available to shore up the berm and divert the floodwaters away from homes.
An excavator finally arrived about 1:30 p.m. and worked through the evening.
Westendorff also used his own small plow to carve tiny ditches through the park to divert water away from homes.
But brown water, many inches deep in spots, ran between and beneath six mobile homes resting on cinder blocks. Some people tore the skirting off the bottom of their homes to allow water to pass under them.
A broad, shallow stream formed in the gravel drive running through the middle of the park.
Carson and her housemate, Maggie March, a wetlands ecologist, filled dozens of sandbags and placed them strategically around their property.
“Our yard is a swamp,” Carson said.
A few residents shut off their gas lines. They soon could be without electricity, too, because power lines are buried underground in the park, Westendorff said.
“I haven’t slept since Friday,” resident Butch Crim said.
In Durango, the Animas River crested slightly higher Wednesday than Tuesday’s 25-year record, with a midday flow of 8,054 cubic feet per second, National Weather Service hydrologist Brian Avery said.
He said he expected today’s peak flow to be about the same. The levels of western Colorado streams should drop slowly over the next week, he said, but the dangers of collapsing banks and debris jams will continue.
The Weather Service is urging people to use extreme caution this weekend as rivers and streams across much of the state will continue to see swift, cold water.
In Glenwood Canyon, the strong current along the Colorado River is leading rafting companies to avoid the most notorious white water.
Gary Hansen, co-owner of Blue Sky Adventures, said that phenomenon is not unusual for a typical spring.
“It’s been so long since we’ve had normal water,” he said. “So it has kind of become a new thing to a lot of people.”
Instead of running the churning Shoshone rapids in Glenwood Canyon, Hansen’s raft trips are starting on the Crystal River, through the Roaring Fork River and into the Colorado.
Outside of media reports about rising water scaring a couple of customers away, he said he expects to do a typical amount of business this Memorial Day weekend.
Staff writer George Merritt contributed to this report.
Staff writer Electa Draper can be reached at 970-385-0917 or edraper@denverpost.com.
