Westcreek – Dan McCurry nosed an American Red Cross pickup through debris-strewn terrain in the Westcreek subdivision Tuesday afternoon to a chorus of driving advice from fellow volunteer Angela Perry.
“That’s unbelievable,” Perry said of the muddy hillside that was once an idyllic meadow.
McCurry and Perry, co-workers at Creative Real Estate & Finance in Denver, assessed the damage of last Friday night’s flood, but found hardly any people to help on Tuesday. The area was a ghost town, even for a neighborhood of mostly vacation homes and weekend cabins.
The few who remained shoveled out mud and hosed down doors and windows, with little to say to the media except “leave.”
A 10-mile stretch of Colorado 67, the only roadway through this part of southwestern Douglas County, was severely damaged by the flooding. It may take up to four months before access is restored to 86 homes.
Damage in the area appeared to be concentrated closer to streams, gullies and West Creek, but it was extensive, authorities said.
Penn Gildersleeve, a state contractor with Icon Engineering, used surveying equipment to measure the rise of the water. Mud and water poured through some homes while others on higher ground were unscathed.
Gildersleeve compared the aftermath to minor surgery. “The definition of minor surgery is surgery someone else is having,” he said.
He nodded to a muddy home with a wrecked landscape down the hill and said, “To this guy, it was a terrible flood.”
Then of the clean, undamaged home up the hill, he said, “To this guy, it was just a hard rain.”
Jamie Moore, Douglas County’s emergency management director, said Tuesday that the long process of calculating the damage is just beginning.
Authorities plan to fly over the entire 15-square-mile area today, which could reveal previously unseen damage. The governor has asked for the area to be assessed as a potential federal disaster area, qualifying it for federal assistance.
Already, officials know repairs will include flood improvements to culverts and bridges, but Friday night’s storm would have been too much for most practical structures to bear, Moore said.
The 2002 Hayman wildfire stripped the area of its vegetation, and the steep terrain, narrow canyon and hard rain Friday night were equal partners in the disaster, Moore said.
Robert Jarrett, a flood expert with the U.S. Geological Survey office in Denver, said he was surprised by the impact of the flood. Normally, four years after a wildfire, the landscape has recovered enough to help fight back flood surges.
This time it didn’t.
The storm, with its concentrated intensity over such a small area, made the flood and its damage difficult to prevent, Jarrett said.
Staff writer Joey Bunch can be reached at 303-820-1174 or jbunch@denverpost.com.
This story has been corrected in this online archive. Originally, due to a reporting error, it stated that the governor had asked for a federal disaster declaration for the West Creek flood site. The governor actually has asked for assessment of the damage to determine whether to ask the president for federal aid.
