Pagosa Springs – The Rio Blanco, a narrow brown ribbon of mostly flat water, doesn’t look like it could have caused some of the state’s biggest flooding problems this past week. But it has forced the extended evacuation of a dozen homes, flooded at least four of them with 18 inches of water and is suspected in the disappearance of a 19-year-old camper.
As of early Thursday evening, the Archuleta County Search and Rescue Team had been unable to find any sign of a missing man from the Rio Blanco Valley. He was last seen by friends late Saturday night sleeping very near a 30-foot-high sheer bank of the stream. It wasn’t until Monday that they realized he was neither at his family’s home nor at his Durango apartment.
Greg Oertel, head of the county’s emergency operations, said he can find no evidence that the riverbank collapsed under the man. It is possible, he said, that the man, whose name he is withholding, fell or rolled off the cliff.
A canine tracking team from the Fort Collins area was expected Thursday evening, Oertel said.
Flood warnings remain in effect for several rivers and creeks in southwest Colorado.
Warm temperatures and high water are expected to continue across western Colorado through Memorial Day weekend, the National Weather Service said.
The La Plata River, 15 miles west of Durango, was coursing out of its debris-blocked channel toward the Pinewind Trailer Park for a second day Thursday.
BlackRidge Excavation spent the past two days reinforcing a berm around the park with concrete blocks to divert most of the flow away from 28 mobile homes.
“Things are looking good for now,” BlackRidge co-owner Bill Ray Jr. said.
In downtown Durango, the Animas River dropped from a 25-year high spring runoff of more than 8,050 cubic feet per second Wednesday to a Thursday peak of 7,600 cfs, the Weather Service reported.