Thick piles of shingles wait for installation on the roofs of homes, and contractors are keeping busy as the cleanup continues in a swatch of the metro area hammered by a July storm.
Water jets through the roof and into Barbara Trujillo’s apartment whenever it has rained since a July 20 storm roared over the Kline Apartments near the corner of Kipling Street and West 38th Avenue in Wheat Ridge.
Last Thursday, a crew was busy repairing her roof to end the gush of water that has plagued her whenever the weather turns sour.
“Every time it rains, it comes in,” said Trujillo, 44. “It has been a mess.”
The storm spawned two tornadoes, uprooted trees, damaged vehicles, blasted out windows and downed power lines, mostly in Lakewood, Arvada, Englewood and Wheat Ridge.
After the storm peppered buildings and vehicles with golf-ball-size hail, the Rocky Mountain Insurance Information Association estimated insured damages at $350 million.
Since Jan. 1 Wheat Ridge has issued 542 roofing permits, compared to 18 during the same time period last year, said Heather Geyer, a spokeswoman for the city.
At Kipling Village Apartments, more than 200 windows have been replaced, and roofers are pounding shingles into place.
“We suffered a lot of damage. We did have a tree that fell into a building,” said Kristina Hammack, 25, the assistant manager of the complex.
Jose Espinoza, 33, who lives in the 300-unit Kipling Village complex, said it took a day to clean his apartment after hail and debris blew in. “In the next apartment, it broke the TV and everything,” he said.
Maintenance workers from Argentx, a company that manages the complex, replaced most of the windows. “We wanted to make sure it was done properly,” said Hammack.
The day after the storm, Jim Stephens used a chain saw to cut downed limbs and uprooted trees, and he raked a thick tangle of debris from his mother’s property near West 32nd Avenue.
Across the street now, a home is edged by stand of newly planted juniper trees, price tags still fluttering from their branches.
In the days following the storm, Hammack said, she was deluged by contractors seeking work. “For the first week, we had five roofing companies a day coming in.”
“Every day I come home, there’s probably three business cards in the door. There really are a million contractors in the area,” said Matt Saba, 30.
In front of one low-slung ranch home, a hand- lettered sign advises, “No more sales man.”
While there are many salespeople patrolling the damaged areas, they haven’t caused any real problems, said Wheat Ridge’s Geyer.
Tom McGhee: 303-954-1671 or tmcghee@denverpost.com
