Durango – After a soggy weekend, the Durango area is bracing for heavy rains and flash floods tonight through Tuesday morning.
Repeat flooding would likely cause greater damage because the weekend deluge eroded creek banks and washed away manmade dikes, said Butch Knowlton, La Plata County’s director of emergency preparedness.
The National Weather Service has predicted heavy rainfall, perhaps another 2 inches on top of the several inches that just fell in the San Juan Mountains, before drier weather returns mid-Tuesday.
Northeast of Durango, Vallecito Creek, probably reaching its highest level since a 1970 flood, flowed at 3,700 cubic feet per second late Friday night, Knowlton said. The swollen creek carried away a garage. Volunteer firefighters rescued a Range Rover inside it but two snowmobiles floated away.
A dozen people from the Vallecito area were evacuated to The Red Cross Bayfield High School shelter Friday night. But the worst might be ahead of them.
“The people along Vallecito Creek are really the most vulnerable now,” Knowlton said. “With those dikes gone, more flooding could really cause problems.”
The Animas River rose dramatically from flows of about 600 cubic feet per second to a peak in downtown Durango of 7,820 cfs at 2:30 p.m. Saturday. People gathered on bridges to watch one of the highest autumn flows in decades. The river stayed swollen through today.
“Our saving grace is the snow line has gotten lower. If it were raining at higher elevations, too, we’d really be hurting,” Knowlton said.
The Animas River flooded pastureland in the valley just north of Durango. Farther north in the Animas River Canyon, flood debris, mudslides and avalanches buried the tracks of the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad for two days.
The slides stranded two trains and roughly 400 passengers in Silverton Friday, spokeswoman Andrea Seid said. Passengers were bused back to Durango, where the last arrived just before 11 p.m.
“People were tired and disappointed, but they were pretty great about it,” Seid said. “It was Mother Nature, and there’s not a darn thing we could do about it.”
By Sunday railroad crews had cleared the tracks and were running trains as far as Cascade Canyon, about the halfway point. Railroad officials were considering whether the weather would permit train rides all the way to Silverton on Tuesday.
Staff writer Electa Draper can be reached at 970-385-0917 or at edraper@denverpost.com.
