As you can imagine, I am spending a lot of time emailing to friends and family to keep them updated on our status. Here is what I wrote to one of my cousins just now, and I'll probably forward it to some other people so I don't have to write it all over again. It is in response to some questions she asked, but I think you'll get enough out of it. Some of it might be redundant with my previous posts.

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There was another cat in a carrier on the shuttle to Denver, and it didn’t say a thing, but Eloise cried some. I’m sure the other people could have done without out, but it wasn’t that horrible level that cats can achieve sometimes. And there were periods when she was quiet, but if someone caught her eye, she started again. At Gary’s folks for two nights she was shut up in the bedroom a lot because they have a cat, but we let her out a few times and she settled in really well.

Here, she sleeps all day and we don’t even see her, and then she goes from window to window at night keeping an eye on the neighborhood. Sometimes she visits me, and she still comes into the bathroom with me when she’s in the area.

This is how she rode in the car most of the time. When we stopped for gas, she dove under the driver’s seat and then came out when we started moving. She is wearing a harness with a long length of clothesline attached so we would have a better chance of catching her if she tried to escape, but she doesn’t even try. It also helps in locating her inside the car: we just follow the rope.



I got the idea for the OK sign from reading about the 1976 Big Thompson flood when people had put out SOS signs for the rescue helicopters. I didn’t want to be evacuated too soon because I wanted to be there when the water went down, and get some things done. Because of the stress, it took me quite awhile to think about what to do, review all the options and pros and cons, and then actually do it. It’s hard to be alone and cut off from the Internet.



I don’t know how many other people did those signs. When the congressional delegation flew over, one of them mentioned that people had spelled out OK with white rocks, meaning they didn’t want to be rescued, so I was glad they interpreted it the way I meant. The fireman gathered it up when I was leaving. I thought we should have made a big check mark.

The only communication I had was watching the TV news, and it didn’t cover what the local firemen and county were doing, for the most part. I didn’t know if the highway was passable from Estes to my house, so figured I would have an air rescue. Sunday morning it started raining hard again, and TV said rescues were cancelled for the day, so I was relaxing to rest up for winterizing the house. I didn’t want to shut off all my water and then wait several days, but of course wanted to get it done. Turned out, I didn’t get a chance to even start winterizing the plumbing. It would have been okay living without water – I had lots of bottled water, and put some in gallon jugs. And we still have the old outhouse out back.

After the first couple of days, a few helicopters started flying overhead, but they followed the road, not the river, so were a distance away. I didn’t know if they could see my OK sign because the covered patio roof might block it from view, so I moved it to a different part of the back yard. I decided that was a good idea because if someone flew over each day, seeing it moved, they’d know I was still able to get around. I always went out and waved when I heard choppers or an airplane, but I didn’t wave frantically, it was more like the queen of England because I didn’t want them to think I was signalling for help. Of course there was the OK sign. But again, watching the news, someone mentioned that people would wave at the choppers to let them know all was okay. I’m sure they are good at interpreting the energy put into those waves.

The first chopper that really seemed to notice me flew over fairly low and loud, and then circled back. I didn’t think they got very low, but low enough. It was a 6 – 8 passenger green and white one without any commercial markings. I didn’t feel like they acknowledged me, but it was hard to see if they waved.

Seeing that copter is what motivated me to start getting ready to leave. I emptied out my deep freeze and most of my refrigerator, throwing the food into the raging water. I put one whole chicken down my septic tank because I’ve heard that’s good for growing bacteria. I left some food in the fridge, not knowing how much longer I’d be there. All those days I was so nervous I didn’t feel at all like eating, so I wasn’t going through my food supply very fast. The next morning when they came to get me, I had to throw the rest of the food in the fridge away, but I overlooked some stuff, like the loaf of bread on the dining room table and an avocado on the counter.

I got the air compressor ready to blow out the house. Fortunately, we keep the portable one in our garage instead of next door where we have a large, heavy duty compressor. It would be hard to get it across the new stream bed in the eroded yard. In the process of getting hoses organized for draining the water heater and hooking up to the plumbing for the compressor, it came to me that I could blow out the pipes in the Brown Palace because we have a hose from it to in front of our house. I had done what I could over there without the compressed air, but I knew that wasn’t enough. What a great feeling that was to accomplish something positive like that.

There is/was electricity all the way down to Seven Pines Campground just around the corner from me, and that would naturally encourage people to go back home. I decided one reason they let them go back is there was nothing else to do with those people because the roads to non-flooded cities were closed, and then the cities downstream started flooding, so a lot of towns are without municipal water and sewer.

A lot of houses like mine were above the flood waters, so as long as they could get there safely and had electricity, they might as well be there as anywhere.

At one point there was a rumor that the city turned off the power to encourage people to evacuate, but the city hotly denied it. In my case, the power pole across the river from my house was pulled down by the water, so it will be a big deal to bring my power up again. I called Light and Power yesterday to try and find out if anything has been said about my situation down here, and it has, so that was encouraging. It’s so hard to know how long it will take them to restore the power, so that’s a problem. The worst thing is that not only do the authorities think the road damage above me is dangerous, I agree. There is a place where the river is really cutting into the road, and I don’t know if it will stop on its own. As much as I would like to get to my house for a couple of hours, unless I find out they are going to stabilize that road starting this next week, I figure to be blocked from going home for at least a month, so rather than wait and see if things get better, I’m going to winterize and not worry about it.

I'm not sure that I want to drive on that little bit that is left because the river is undercutting the asphalt, and it's hard to see if it's stable under there. Also, the river has continued to be higher than normal, so it could have done more damage in the several days since this picture was taken.




This morning I called my plumber and asked his advice about how to go about it. He confirmed that I need to put about 1/3 of a gallon of that RV antifreeze in the dishwasher and run it half a cycle. Then, he puts 1/2 gallon in each toilet and 2 cups down each drain. And 1/2 gallon in the clothes washer pump. He thought I should buy four gallons for the house. “You can never have too much antifreeze, so if there is any let when you’re done, go around give everything an extra shot.”

The Army is restoring the river channels to their prior reconfiguration, starting with the St. Vrain near Lyons because that road is less damaged and can be opened to traffic sooner. I was glad to hear this, because it means they will work on my part of the river and that will mean fixing my driveway from the highway. I don’t know how much they are supposed to do in my yard, and that was one reason I wanted to be around when they are doing it, so maybe they would do more than required. The bridge is a county bridge, and I don’t know to what extent they are required to maintain the approaches to it, but I’m hoping they will fix them, and that’s most of what needs to be done. It would be daunting if I thought I was on my own for finding someone to fix my private road."