With twisters in the foothills and a blizzard of hail, the great flood of 1965 announced its arrival with Old Testament fury.
After lunchtime on June 16 – 40 years ago today – the coal-black sky delivered a rainstorm so furious that people in Douglas County said they labored to breathe.
A rancher put a washtub in his yard to measure the rain, and it quickly overflowed. The National Weather Service recorded 14 inches – a year’s worth of rain for the region – in a little more than three hours near Larkspur.
The storm drove a 20-foot wall of water from Douglas County to downtown Denver that evening, taking at least 21 lives, devastating 15 counties and leaving mountains of mud and $540 million in damage – $3.2 billion in today’s dollars.
“It was awesome, really awesome,” recalled Jim Ozment, 70, a retired railroad construction engineer who lives in Golden. “No one ever thought a thing like this could happen. And what was terrifying is that it was happening at night.”
The flood came after three years of drought. Weeks of rains had saturated the ground and filled streams, so when the big downpour arrived, the runoff had nowhere to go but downstream.
East Plum Creek and West Plum Creek, normally two gentle streams, grew into raging rivers by the time they joined in Sedalia, then rolled on to an already engorged South Platte in Littleton.
The flood’s power was met by an army of everyday heroes, such as the late Kenneth Fisher, a 37-year-old Air Force veteran who worked for the phone company.
Fisher went to the water’s edge at West Alameda Avenue and South Tejon Street, where police officers Jack Peachey and Robert Bott were maneuvering to rescue three people clinging to a sign at the Gaslight Motel, about five blocks down the black raging river.
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“I can remember it like it was yesterday,” Peachey, 78, said Wednesday in a phone interview from his home in New Mexico.
That night, he was just wishing for a boat. “I have a boat,” Fisher told Peachey at the time, then disappeared to retrieve it.
All three men climbed in.
“I was scared to death,” Peachey said. “But I wasn’t a hero. I was a police officer. This is what Denver paid me to do.”
The boat was immediately gripped by the torrent. Cars, mobile homes and trees emerged and rolled back into the watery abyss like massive sharks. When a big section of a house would go back under, the undertow nearly swallowed the boat.
Fisher remained calm at the wheel. The officers pulled down the three people from the motel sign and delivered them to safety.
Then, the trio of rescuers went back out to save more stranded souls. They were on the river for more than an hour. In all, six people owed their lives to Fisher and the officers.
“I’m not supposed to be here,” Peachey said Wednesday. “Without (Fisher) driving that boat the way he did, we would have all been dead.”
The two officers wrote a letter to their police chief that recounted Fisher’s uncommon heroism.
Fisher died in 2000 at 72.
Police radios crackled with amazing reports all night.
Astonished officers reported walls of water barreling down city streets; bodies sweeping past; gas leaks; a breached chemical plant; screams for help; and looting that took extra rifles from an armory to contain.
The flood left a 100-mile stretch in ruins. Virtually every bridge from Sixth Avenue in Denver to Palmer Lake, some 40 miles away, was a skeleton, if there were any remains at all.
Despite its high and dry reputation, Colorado has a history of deadly floods. Two others, in particular, stand out:
The 1976 flash flood through Big Thompson Canyon was the state’s deadliest disaster, killing 144 people and causing $35.5 million in damage.
In 1997, a flash flood hit Fort Collins, killing five people and causing $200 million in damage, including 25 buildings at Colorado State University.
The 1965 flood left a broad, enduring legacy, changing where metro residents live, work and play, while inspiring a generation of flood-control projects.
Chatfield and Bear Creek reservoirs were built after the storm. The bike path along the South Platte was created, forming a buffer for water to rise safely. New zoning codes kept construction off the river’s edge.
And in 1965, hardly anyone bought or sold flood insurance in metro Denver, according to news accounts of the day.
Advertisements offering flood coverage dotted the newspapers for weeks. Today, more than 14,000 Coloradans have federally backed flood coverage.
The storm also left a lasting impression on Steve Vandas, who was 12 years old at the time.
Along with his father and uncle, Steve went to the intersection of West Sixth Avenue and Federal Boulevard, as close as they dared get to the river – normally a quarter-mile to the east.
The rain had slowed to a steady drizzle, but it was dark. They heard thunderous collisions of debris against the Sixth Avenue Bridge.
It’s still the worst flood Vandas has seen – and that’s saying something, considering he has spent his career as a hydrologist and education specialist with the U.S. Geological Survey.
The flood fed his interest in water and science, but the life- changing effect came to him on the ride home after standing at the swollen river’s edge. “Everything people had was in that river,” he was thinking. “Their belongings, their houses, their whole lives were in that river.”
Staff writer Joey Bunch can be reached at 303-820-1174 or jbunch@denverpost.com.
By the numbers
Facts and figures related to the 1965 flood that swept down the South Platte on June 16 and 17:
21 deaths
$540 million in damage, most of it uninsured
250,000 acres inundated
15 Colorado counties damaged
33 communities declared federal disaster areas by President Lyndon Johnson.
152 thoroughbreds saved in a dramatic rescue at Centennial Race Track
10,000 telephones out in Denver and 20,000 statewide
120 houses destroyed in metro Denver and 935 damaged
280 mobile homes destroyed
62 businesses destroyed
16 Denver bridges destroyed
14 inches of rainfall recorded in Larkspur between 2 and 5 p.m. on June 16
Three days to restore rail service to and from Denver
Six tornadoes related to the weather pattern
500 cars stranded on Interstate 25 between Castle Rock and Larkspur
