Westcreek – Yolanda Parrish walked through her laundry room Sunday atop a rippling mud pile so high that she had to duck under the gutters of her home as she exited.
The torrential rains and flooding that hit this small community in southwestern Douglas County beginning Friday night sent a wave of mud through the Parrish home. It was one of at least three houses in the Westcreek area to be destroyed, leaving the families homeless.
“It’s just so pretty out here,” Parrish said. “We were comfortable in this house. There was a lot of good fishing here. Nobody bothers anybody, and everybody helps everybody.”
She paused and let out a heavy sigh.
“But it’s all ruined.”
Rain poured in through the laundry- room door Friday night and was soon followed by mud from the surrounding hillsides. The mud had little to stop it after the Hayman fire charred trees and cleared vegetation four years ago.
On Sunday, Parrish, her husband, Marty, and her son, Elmo, 16, returned to their home of two years to see what they could save. They found mostly devastation.
Inside the log home they rent, mud was caked up to 3 feet deep. It was shoe-sucking mud, which destroyed just about everything it touched. The television, the couch and the cabinets were a total loss.
The mud slammed into appliances so heavily that Yolanda Parrish had to dig for several minutes just to open the refrigerator door a crack. Somewhere, buried under the muck, were her husband’s eyeglasses and a rug she had just finished cleaning before the storm.
When a firefighter, who was helping the family salvage its property, picked up Parrish’s computer, water ran out.
Firefighters from the Mountain Communities Volunteer Fire Department and neighbors had arrived to help her family move what was salvageable into a barn on drier ground. Under blue tarps, they carried mattresses, chests of drawers and pictures out of the home, owned by the community water board.
It was another disaster for a community that has been trying to recover since the fire, said Mountain Communities Fire Chief Steve Brown.
“We’re getting kind of beat up pretty good,” he said, speaking of both the flooding and the Hayman fire. “With all the ridge lines being burned out, we’re always under that threat (of mudslides) until we get some vegetation back.”
Despite the devastating property damage, firefighters were able to save the lives of the area residents. Though in the case of the Parrish family, it was a close call. On Friday night, about 2 inches of rain thundered down on the community in an hour. Marty Parrish opened the front door to give the water a place to go, and the family went to Elmo’s bedroom in the back of the house. The three huddled on his bed as the water crept higher and higher. They were not sure they would survive.
“We were just hoping and praying it would stop coming up because it wouldn’t quit,” Yolanda Parrish said.
Firefighters pulled the family to safety, and they spent the night at Brown’s home. Brown, whose house is on the same side of the creek, was also stranded when floodwaters knocked out every bridge through town.
Even the firehouse flooded. Sunday, Brown’s wife, Judy, who is a captain with the department, spent the morning vacuuming up the water, while the rest of the department patrolled the community.
Steve Brown said there is a bright side to the disaster.
“The real story is all the people who pulled together,” he said.
But even Sunday night, there was still danger. The rain continued to fall in the area. At one point earlier, the clouds separated just a bit, and the lightest shade of blue sky was visible. There was faint hope that the storms were over.
Within moments, the hole closed, the sky rumbled and those assembled looked up warily. More rain in the already saturated ground could mean more flooding and more mudslides, firefighters worried.
“We just hope we don’t get dumped on like we did Friday night,” Judy Brown said.
For the Parrishes, there is little left to lose. They didn’t have insurance and are staying at a Woodland Park hotel.
As Yolanda Parrish stood outside the laundry room, she glanced up at the hills and down at the creek that gives this town its name.
A light drizzle fell.
“I don’t know what we’re going to do,” she said. “All I know is that I’ve got to take whatever I can save and get out of here. But I don’t know what we’re going to do.”
Staff writer John Ingold can be reached at 720-929-0898 or jingold@denverpost.com.
