TOO MUCH RAIN

7/31/1976 - Summer in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and over 3,000 people choose to escape the month's heat, and celebrate the country's 200th birthday, and the state's 100th anniversary, by availing themselves of the outdoor activities to be found in the Big Thompson River Canyon ... a 25-mile-long stretch of rocks and sheer cliffs through which the north fork of the river flows (a tributary of the South Platte River), with U.S. Highway 34 running alongside (dotted with cabins, businesses, and campgrounds), stretching from the town of Estes Park (at the upper end of the canyon), just below Rocky Mountain National Park, to Loveland on the eastern plains of the region, a drop of over half-a-mile in elevation.  For those that survive the Saturday night, it will be an evening they will never forget! Headwaters Storm CloudsStorm

A fine Saturday, but as the day progresses, warm moist air rises off the Front Range mountains and collides with a Canadian cold front ... the result is a deluge of wet falling from the sky (over a foot of water will come down in little over an hour), but unlike most Colorado mountain storms, the wind is too weak to move the storm out of the mountains and out on to the eastern plains, and too much water in one spot, and the spot absorbs almost nothing, quickly causes problems.  With almost no warning (at the bottom of the canyon it isn't even raining), at 6:30 in the early evening disaster strikes the canyon when the rains turn the two-to-three foot deep river into a 20-foot-tall wall of water that moves down the canyon at 15 mph, destroying everything in its path (one boulder, 12-feet-by-12-feet-by-23-feet, weighing 275 tons is treated as if it is a rubber beach ball and is deposited half-a-mile away).  Normal flow for the river is 210 cubic feet per second, but during the flood, the river is running at 31,200 cubic feet per second (scientists afterwards investigating the tragedy will determine that the river has not run as high as it gets during the storm in over 10,000 years) ... 150 times the norm! 

 US 34

"I'm stuck, I'm right in the middle of it, I can't get out ... about a half mile east of Drake, on the highway.  Get the cars out of the low area down below, and as soon as starts picking up ... high ground ..." are the last words of 53-year-old Sgt. Willis Hugh Purdy of the Colorado State Patrol (a 26-year veteran of the force) as he is washed away trying to alert and rescue people along U.S. Highway 34 at about 9:15 in the evening.  There are 4,000 souls about the canyon, old, young, natives, and visitors from around the country and globe, with no alert and little possibility in spots of scrambling up the canyon's walls, 143 other unlucky individuals will join Purdy in death (over 250 people will also be injured in the weather event) ... wrong place at the wrong time, the flood takes victims from Colorado, Nebraska, North Dakota, the Philippines, Ohio, Missouri, Iowa, Georgia, Illinois, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Kansas, Washington, Texas, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Arizona (a temporary morgue is set up in Loveland, where it will take authorities until September to identify all the bodies ... all the bodies found that is ... five individuals vanish in the raging waters of the Big Thompson and are never seen again). 

 Officer Purdy

In the chaos, several vacationing families take multiple hits, but none suffers more than the Haskell Clan of Iowa ... Chad (5), Judy (31), William (32), Emma (63), William F. (70), and Kelly Lemon (13 ... another grandson) all drown in the flood ... three generations gone! Playing no favorites, Mother Nature will take lives as old as 94, and as young as only 2 in the tragedy! 

 Where Did the Road Go?

And there is more than just a human toll to the tragedy!

 Once a Home! Once a Car!

Along with an unknown numbers of animals that can't make it to high ground in time, during the four hour life of the flood, 16 miles of U.S. Highway 34 are destroyed, 316 houses vanish or become ruins (along with 45 mobile homes), 52 businesses are drowned, and 438 cars and trucks become useless junk (it will cost $1.6 million to cleanup 320,450 cubic yards of debris) ... altogether, the canyon and its people suffer $35.6 million in damages!    

 Can You Say Precarious?  Disaster  After

Reacting to the tragedy, Governor Dick Lamm mobilizes the state's National Guard, and pushed by Colorado's representatives in Congress, President Gerald Ford will declare the area a natural disaster site.  And it is a good thing help is sent!  Over 800 people will have to be rescued by helicopters, and 200 people are still stranded in the canyon when the horrible weekend ends and Monday morning arrives.

 Loveland

Mother Nature a harsh mistress not to be messed with, memorials to the fallen will be made out of boulders that left the riverbed (at the end of the flood, the river will have 30 new spots where it changes course) ... one for all those lost in the flood, and another dedicated to the two members of law enforcement that lost their lives trying to save others (Purdy and Michel O. Conley of Estes Park).

 Memorial 

 Historical Marker

 Memorial