Denver officials are considering installing signs to better warn residents about flooding dangers in areas such as the one where a 2-year-old was swept away Monday night.
Elsha Guel sought shelter with her son from a downpour in a culvert – an underpass with a walking trail adjacent to a drainage – along Lakewood Gulch when they were caught in a flash flood.
The body of Jose Matthew Jauregui Jr. was found Wednesday on a sandbank in the South Platte River.
Public Works Manager Bill Vidal said the culverts around the metro area are designed to use pedestrian pathways like spillways over a dam.
“What you will see is that these bike paths will flood often when these gulches are running deep, and they were designed that way,” he said. “We have situations like this that exist all over the region that the region has been systematically trying to fix over decades.”
At another culvert along Goldsmith Gulch, a police officer nearly drowned while trying to rescue a teenage boy who witnesses said was swept into the river during the same storm. The teenager has not been located.
Denver has planned to spend $5.67 million to widen Lakewood Gulch and the culvert where Guel’s son was swept away. The widening is intended to slow water flows during floods.
“The region works with (the Urban Drainage and Flood Control District) to look at these kinds of situations and eliminate them and do more open-channel mitigation,” Vidal said
City Councilwoman Judy Montero, who represents the area, said she spoke to Vidal on Wednesday about putting up signs in English and Spanish.
Montero also would like to see some kind of escape built off the Lakewood Gulch path, much of which is currently lined with walls.
“It’s like a cement canyon,” she said.
Staff writer George Merritt can be reached at 303-954-1657 or gmerritt@denverpost.com.
