Interview Transcription
Interviewee: Tara Schoedinger, Mayor of Jamestown, Colorado
Interviewer: Tessa Moening
Location: Town Hall, Jamestown, Colorado
Date: June 30, 2014
Transcribed by: Tessa Moening
Abstract: Tara Schoedinger, Mayor of Jamestown, Colorado, discusses her personal experiences
with the September 2013 flooding as well as her role advocating for the town post-flood.
Schoedinger remembers witnessing the landslide that took the life of her neighbor, Joe Howlett.
She explains the actions the community took during and immediately following the flooding to
help keep people safe and eventually evacuate most of the community. Schoedinger also speaks
to the importance of community in Jamestown and the town’s plans to continue to rebuilding
process. Recovery efforts were well underway at the time of the interview, and Schoedinger
hopes people will be able to return to their homes by August 2014.
Note: Much of the background noise heard throughout this interview reflects the state of
Jamestown in June 2014, nine months after the flood. The town is still reconstructing, and the
Town Hall, where this interview took place, also acts as the volunteer and recovery headquarters.
______________________________________________________________________________
[Background noise].
Tessa: Ok, this is Tessa Moening, I’m here with Tara, Schoedinger. [Show-ding-er]?
Tara: Schoedinger. [Shed-ing-er].
TM: Schoedinger, ok. Tara Schoedinger, who is the mayor of Jamestown. Um, we’re doing an
interview for the 2013 Colorado Flood Oral History Project. Today is Monday, June 30, and
we’re in Jamestown, Colorado. So just to get started, can you tell me where and when you were
born?
TS: Sure. I was born October 26, 1970, in Columbus, Ohio.
TM: Oh, thank you. And when did you come to Colorado?
TS: I came here in the fall of 1989 to go to school at CU 1.
TM: Oh ok, and just never left?
TS: That’s correct.
[Both laugh].
1
University of Colorado at Boulder, Colorado.
1
TM: Ok, that’s good! And when did you move here to Jamestown?
TS: I moved here in December of 2001.
[Background noise: man’s voice: feel like I can do the job on a long-term basis].
TM: Ok. And when were you elected mayor?
TS: I was elected mayor in April of 2010.
TM: Ok.
TS: And then again in April of 2012. And again in April of 2014.
TM: Ok, ok, so just recently.
TS: That was my third term.
TM: Ok. Sounds good. Um, can you describe, I guess, just a typical day as mayor, maybe preand post-flood and how that’s changed?
[Background noise: man’s voice…a decision…].
TS: [Laughs]. They’re quite different.
TM: [Laughs]. Yeah!
TS: Ah, pre-flood we had, you know if there were issues we were trying to tackle, it was a lot
more, um, it was a volunteer position, all or our town board seats are volunteer. And um, you
know, it took a few hours a week, sometimes more, sometimes less, just depending on what was
going on. Um, but everything changed on September 11th, when the flood hit, and since then it’s
been a full time job for me, ah, since September 12th. And, previously I was at Vail Resorts. I
was a director of IT over there, and, ah, my last day of work there was about 7 o’clock on the
night of the 11th and they gave me a leave of absence for several months afterwards, but it was
clear to all of us that I wasn’t going to able to go back, even on a part time basis. So I resigned
from Vail Resorts on the first of the year.
TM: Mm-hm.
TS: To do this full-time.
TM: Ok. Thank you. And then, getting a little more specific to the actual flood, how did you
become aware of the severity of the flood?
TS: Well, the severity of it sort of developed over days and I think that it wasn’t something that I
was conscious about right away. Um, so I live next door to Joe Howlett, who was killed during
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the flood, and we’d heard that gulch go before ‘cause it sounds like a freight train coming down
the hillside, and it’s incredibly loud. And, ah, it was raining so hard and had been for days that,
we have a lot of skylights in our house, and it was just really loud inside the house. And, ah, then
we heard the gulch go. My husband was down stairs, and he ran outside and said, “There goes
the gulch.” And he ran out and he came back in, ah, less than a minute later, and he said, “Joey’s
house collapsed, and he’s in it. Call 9-1-1.”
[Background noise: woman’s voice: Oh, I took care of that…].
TS: So, I called 9-1-1, and I ordered as many resources, being on the fire department, I, I kind of
have an idea of what to order, since we’ve been through this before. I ordered as many resources
as we could around lights and road graders and bulldozers and emergency services, and, ah,
paramedics from surrounding agencies, and, ah, other fire departments to come and help us. But,
um, but nobody was able to come. So they toned our fire department; our fire department came.
Ah, but we were cut off, sort of on the east and west sides by the, by the debris slide. And, um,
and so we couldn’t really get to each other. Some people started climbing over the debris slide,
but that was really scary ‘cause it had already come down twice.
[Loud creaking in the background].
And, um, so we were trying to get up behind the house and trying to see if there was any way to
get in. I’d actually gone in after the first slide and, into his living room, and I could see the wall
bul-bulging out with-filled with debris behind it, and that was his bedroom. And, um, I was in
there with his roommate, who had climbed out the window, as the house was collapsing. And
then, after we left, another slide came down, knocked the whole house off its foundation by
about four feet, and had come all the way through that room we’d just been standing in.
TM: Wow.
TS: So it was pretty clear to us that we all needed to not be in there. It was clear to us, very clear
to us, that Joey had died. And, um, there wasn’t a way that he could have survived that, if he was
in bed. And, ah, it is indeed where they found him. And, then, that started at 11:30, and I think
by 1:30 we understood what was happening, and, um, we’d agreed that nobody else was gonna
climb across the debris slide, so we were separated east and west. But at that point the, um, the
water came over the culvert at Ward Street and was coming down Main Street, about six inches
deep. And, um, we realized really quickly that the next emergency was that we needed to get
everybody down Ward Street evacuated, because they were going to lose all access, and were
gonna become an island. So, ah, so a group of people went door to door and brought everybody
out. A big line of cars heading up the road. We were going to drop a dog off, our dog off at a
friend’s house, and, um, we were part of this whole caravan up the hill. But it was clear that
nobody could even get up the hill because there were other debris slides up above us...
TM: Mm-hm.
TS: …that were even bigger than the one at Joey’s. So we all ended up at this friend’s house.
[Laughs]. About 20 of us! And five dogs, and five kids, and we were all soaking wet and covered
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in mud. So that was about 1:30, and by then, um, the school had opened up. Beth, who works at
the school had opened up the school as an evacuation center, and, which is typical for us. And
we started, we had emergency radios that we could communicate back and forth with. We also
had two phone lines up there. And we still had power, and internet, and all of that. So, at that
point, we were just going down the phone, the town phone directory…
[Door slams].
TS: …and contacting everybody that lived in a low-lying area along the street (or stream?) to
make sure that they knew what was happening, that the school was open if they wanted to leave
their homes, recommending that they leave their homes. And, um, and so that’s what we did until
about 5:30. And, um, it was clear to us that, we’d tried to get ahold of Zach, Joey’s son, to let
him know what had happened because it was now on the news…
TM: Mm-hm.
TS: …um, that somebody in Jamestown had died, and I think before morning they even posted
his name.
TM: Wow.
TS: Ah, which seemed a bit irresponsible to me. And, um, so I was really— He lives in Ithaca,
New York. He’s a student, a Ph.D. student at Cornell, and I was concerned that we was gonna
read about it before he heard it from friends. So, um, so we laid down, and everybody tried to go
to sleep at 5:30. And, um, I think I could lay there until about 7:30. And then I got up, my
husband and a friend, and we went down, who were both on the fire department as well, and we
came back into town and, could see as the sun was coming up that things continued to get worse
overnight. And, um, and so that’s when it dawned on me that this wasn’t gonna stop, that this
was just gonna continue to get worse.
TM: That sounds like a really difficult night.
TS: [Laughs]. It was pretty awful.
TM: Yeah.
TS: It was interesting though, it was an interest-, a really amazing sense of community in terms
of…
[Door slams].
TS: …how everybody worked together to make it all happen. And, um, how cooperative
everybody was. It was, ah, I think it was pretty unique.
TM: Yeah, a lot of the things that I’d been reading about it, I was really struck with the sense of
community that came through, even that.
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TS: Um-hm.
TM: Um, and is that, I mean, still the case?
TS: Um-hm.
TM: It sure looks like it with all the…
TS: I mean it was before the flood…
TM: Um-hm.
TS: …and I think it continues to be during our recovery efforts. I think it’s really hard for people.
And I’m amazed by people’s resiliency and, ah, and fortitude to withstand everything that they
have to go through in order to endure their own recovery efforts.
TM: Right. On a personal level and, as far as the community goes.
TS: Yeah, I mean, tearing up streets in front of people’s yards, er, tearing up people’s yards,
tearing up people’s, the road in front of people’s homes, blocking access, they have to walk
down really far.
TM: Mm.
TS: But everybody understands.
TM: Yeah, yeah that’s…
TS: Yeah.
TM: a silver-lining maybe.
TS and TM: [Laughs].
TM: Um, I guess you mentioned that you’d been through this before, maybe to some extent, as
far as, um, flooding and have to deal with…
TS: The landslide we’d been through…
TM: Ok.
TS: …before. So, um, in 2000, October 29, 2003, we had a big wild land fire that came through
on this north side of town. And, um, it started about 5:45 in the morning, I think is when we got
the call. And, um, since that fire, it lasted about a day…
5
[Background noise: Door slams; man’s voice: …was asking about…about them].
TS: …we had freezing rain that night that put it out. But we, um, um, ah—
[Background noise: unclear man’s voice].
TS: Since that hillside…
[Background noise: man’s voice: there’s some levels…about them…].
TS: …ah, burned, it’s been, ah, been sliding ever since then, down Howlett’s Gulch. And, uh, the
neighbors have lost two cars in it.
TM: Oh, wow.
TS: Yeah, so we’re kinda used to that, but it never hit the structure before.
TM: Mm-hm.
TS: This one- this slide came all the way from the top of Porphyry Mountain, so, um, it hadn’t
come from that far before.
[Background noise: man’s voice: …make sure we’re on the same page before I…].
TS: And it had never had that quantity of debris in it.
TM: Right. Ok. Um, so you were not prepared, but at least familiar somewhat with the landslide
aspect of it. Um, how well would you say your office was prepared for the challenges of a flood
like this?
[Background noise: man and woman’s voices].
TS: Oh, completely unprepared. Um, we’d been preparing for fire. I mean…
TM: Makes sense.
TS: …that’s what had been taking over the state, right?
TM: Right.
TS: I mean we’d been setting records, year after year, with the wildfires across the state. We
were working to become a Firewise Community. And, um, and so that’s what we were preparing
for. I think we were,…
[Background noise: woman’s voice: …and going back to the car…].
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TS: …I mean we kn-, we knew that there was a possibility of flood, but the last major flood was
in 1969. Um, but it had a similar impact to the community at the time. There was another one in
1913, almost 100 years to the day of this one.
TS and TM: [Laughs].
TS: And, um, and then there had been some back in the 1800s, as well, that were recorded that
were similar to this.
[Background noise: woman’s voice: …and…and then, ah…].
TM: Ah, would you say, I guess how well prepared was the community, in general? Or
individuals? Again, were they more prepared for fire or…
TS: I think we were prepared just on an emergency preparedness basis, in that people knew
where the evacuation center was, we knew to go down the list. Um, people were cooperative,
with, with the information that they were receiving.
TM: Mm-hm.
TS: It was the middle of the night. And, um, people worked really well together. Like, I don’t
know if that’s emergency preparedness, or just a sense of community, but, [laughs]. People,
people got it. People got it very quickly.
TM: Um-hm.
TS: So I think, to that extent, I don’t know if we were prepared, but we worked well together.
TM: Mm-hm.
TS: In the event. Because, then, Thursday… So when we came down about 7:30 in the morning
on Thursday, we could see that things were getting worse. Um, we built a bridge, er planks, over
the debris slide, so that we could evacuate people from the west side of town to the east side…
[Background noise: man’s voice].
TS: to get them then across the only remaining bridge to the south side, which is where the park
is, where we land helicopters.
TM: Ok.
TS: ‘Cause we knew we were now cut-off…
TM: Right.
TS: …in and out of town.
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TM: Mm-hm.
TS: And so, it was, how do we get people over so that we can stage people so that when the
helicopters come, we’ll be able to evacuate them.
TM: Mm-hm.
TS: And, um, and so that was a bit of a challenge. Some people didn’t want to go, which was
fine in the end. And, but the majority of the people ended up on the south side, up on the hillside
there by the school. And, we were in the last truck that went across, and, across that bridge
before, ah, it was completely overcome. And we basically hydroplaned all the way down lower
Main Street, ‘til we made the turn up to the school. And that was the last truck to go through with
evacuations from the north side to the south side. And then we spent sort of the afternoon there.
We eventually lost all power and communications, other than emergency radios. We had, um…
[Background noise: woman’s voice: Hi…it’s Nina. It’s ah, 20 after 10, and I was trying to catch
up with you…].
TS: …probably less than 50 people on this side and probably over 200 people on the other side.
And, um, so we kinda got everybody settled either at the school or friends’ homes and that kind
of stuff and, got ourselves settled, and, um, I didn’t sleep much that night. I slept for a few hours,
but I woke up really early in the morning thinking, “Need to do something, with everybody.”
TM: Um-hm.
TS: And, we didn’t have bottled water, that kind of stuff. And so I put together a community
meeting on the Friday morning, and it was, ah, and we organized our community into
community, um, command team and an incident response team, so an emergency response team.
So, our EMS 2 and fire personnel would be, um, emergency response, if there was an emergency.
And then we had a community team that was made up of so, some of our natural community
leaders. And, um, and these women would collect information about where people were staying,
um, who people were staying with, what people had, what people needed. Um, we didn’t want
people just to start bringing a bunch of supplies down to the school. [Chuckles].
TM: Right.
TS: But we wanted to know where those supplies were so if somebody said they needed baby
formula, or feminine hygiene products, or a change of clothes, or diapers, or whatever it might
be, we knew where, we knew who had those. We knew we could connect them. So that kind of
stuff. We also asked people to, who had propane stoves to start boiling water.
TM: Ok.
2
Emergency Medical Service(s)
8
TS: And those with electric stoves to start helping to collect water and find containers to put that
water in. Um, people started making food and bringing it down. And, um, we had one emergency
where, ah, somebody needed some IV 3 medication. And, so we looked for somebody who knew
how to do that. I’d been trained in it, but didn’t know how to do it really. Um, but so, ah, so we
did, did that, and I had to start and IV and push some meds through that. And so our paramedic,
who was on the south side sent over the bags and walked me through it.
TM: Oh, wow.
TS: So we had to set up a zip line here and send, to send the med bags over. But we were having
a real medical emergency. And, um, we’d asked for a medevac,…
[Crash in background].
TS: …and so we knew that that would come as soon as the weather lifted enough for the
medevac to land or to fly. And, um, and so we were waiting on that. So we’d finished up the
community meeting, and everybody was, sort of, and the sun came out in the middle of it. And,
um, and then everybody went off and started doing their things…
[Crash in Background].
TS: …and working together, and I think people were ok. They were good to be here for a few
days, that sort of thing. Um, and then I got a call that the medevac was coming, so I started
organizing that. And then we quickly found out that they were actually coming with all the
helicopters to evacuate everybody. Which people weren’t mentally prepared for.
TM: Right, yeah, if you’d been working like you had…
TS: [Laughs]. And they didn’t know how long they were gonna be out of their homes. We’d just
watch homes wash away the day before. And, um, and so, um, yeah, it was, it was a bit
unsettling for people. And trying to convince people to go, it took a lot of convincing…
TM: Mm-hm.
TS: …people that, you really need to go, ‘cause we can’t, we don’t have any services. We don’t
have any even…
[Background noise: women’s voice: …I hear ya…].
TS: …even basic services for people here. And, I think we evacuated almost 300 people…
TM: Oh, ok.
TS: …by air. And dogs and cats and—
3
Intravenous
9
TM: Oh.
TS: Ah, and so that all happened on Friday afternoon, Saturday, and some more on Sunday. And
by Sunday they flew in, um, Rocky Mountain Rescue Team, and um, ah Incident Command
from Boulder. And they set up a human zip line, not just a med bag zip line, but one for us to
come across on.
TM: Oh, wow.
TS: And so there were about ten of us left over on that side that didn’t evacuate. And so we came
across on the zip line, with my dog. [Laughs].
TM: [Laughs]. Oh, good!
TS: And, um, and we came back over here after the whole community had been evacuated. Some
more people flew out. They just needed to get into their homes that had been damaged. Um, but
they eventually fle-flew out as well and then there just a few, a handful of us that stayed. I
stayed, um, because the incident was still active until we recovered Joe Howlett.
[Background noise: women’s voice].
TS: So I stayed with the incident command team to do that. And, ah, I didn’t do anything with it,
but just made sure that, if they needed anything that was part of the town that we were taking
care of them, um, to help facilitate that activity. So I think I went out about a week after the
flood.
TM: Ok.
TS: About five, five, seven days later.
TM: Um-hm. And how long was it before you, you came back then?
TS: I stayed, my father was actually here, and he was threatening to hike in or bike in or…
TM: Oh no.
TS: [Laughs]. Anyhow, so I needed to go down and see him!
[Both laugh].
TM: Um-hm!
TS: But I also needed to go down and see my community and um…
TM: Right.
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TS: I don’t know whether it was a Wednesday or a Thursday that I came out, but, um, at that
point we could drive out.
TM: Ok.
[Background noise: woman’s voice: …so we’re…].
TS: Um, so we drove out. Ah, they had opened this road going up so we were able to drive out,
across the Peak to Peak and down Sunshine Canyon. Um, so we did that, met up with my
parents, and then, um, also had our first community meeting that night.
TM: Mm-um.
TS: So, just to let people know what we, what we knew, what we didn’t know, and what was,
what we thought might happen next. But really just an effort to try to get people together and
connected and make sure that everybody was ok, that everybody had a place to stay, and people
were ok. I mean they weren’t ok, but they had a roof over their heads.
TM: Yeah.
TS: Yeah.
TM: Ok as, as possible at that point.
TS: Yeah. [Laughs]. It was pretty traumatic for people. I think people were still in a state of
shock. I think the, sort of the trauma of it all set in over time.
TM: Oh, absolutely. Um, so prior to the evacuations…
TS: Um-hm.
TM: …on that large scale, was there still communication? Or, how did you inform people that
they needed to start evacuating in the helicopters?
TS: So we had communication through our emergency radios, our fire department radios, with
communications down in Boulder.
TM: Ok.
TS: But only one person, um, our incident commander, here on the north side did. The rest of us
didn’t have the frequency, and so he would relay the, the information to us. So I was sort of
incident command on that side, and he was incident command on this side, and we were in
constant communication. He was in constant communication with Boulder. And then on the
south side, our incident command team over there had, we all had radios so we could all hear the
information. And then, um, I had a bullhorn.
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TM: Ok.
TS and TM: [Laughs].
TM: Wow, hey, that’s what it took!
TS: Ah, we tried to activate the sirens here, to get messages out. But it was so garbled, that, um,
you couldn’t really hear the message that was coming across so people asked us to stop using it.
TM: Ok, it wasn’t worth it.
TS: I don’t know if it was just waterlogged or what.
TM: Oh.
[Both laugh].
TS: But, so I sort of ran around with a bullhorn.
TM: Ok, and that was how you were getting information out and everything.
TS: And pull people back together, yeah.
TM: Yeah, ok.
TS: We went door to door a lot.
[Background noise: man’s voice: …I don’t think you can…].
TM: Ok.
TS: Yeah.
TM: So, it sounds like a lot of the initial, ah, efforts were very local.
TS: They were all local, yeah.
TM: Yeah.
TS: I mean, that’s all we had.
TM: Yeah, yeah, and that was, um, because of the, the roads were cut off, and you said the other,
um the other emergency responders that you called couldn’t make it in that was because of—
TS: Right, I guess there was one road grader that tried to come up the night of the, of the 11th.
And, um, he came up and got stuck in the canyon because the road washed out in front of him
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and behind him. And he bailed out of his road grader and was missing for like 36 hours or
something.
TM: Oh, wow. But he, he, he made it.
TS: Yeah.
TM: Yikes. Um, so at what point then did you start working with other agencies, as far as, um
the flood management and recovery?
TS: Um. We were working with Lefthand. So, Lefthand Fire Protection District, their deputy
chief lives in Jamestown, and he was our incident command.
TM: Um-hm.
TS: And then he was working closely with Boulder County, our incident commander down there,
this guy Max. And um, once we’d evacuated everybody, it was the, the Colorado National Guard
and the U.S. Army, 4th Aviation Combat Brigade that flew everybody out. And, um, then Max,
our incident commander, and the Rocky Mountain Rescue Teams came up, to sort of set things
up and get us all to one side of town, and also just to sort of be a presence in town.
TM: Mm-hm.
TS: And then once they could get out they drove out they drove out, um, we had the…
[Background noise: crash].
TS: We had the Sheriff’s Office in here, who were manning the road up above us so we didn’t
get disaster tourists, and we didn’t want looters to come in and that kind of stuff.
TM: Ok, right.
TS: And, um, so we worked with different agencies, sort of all along the way. Ah, and then it
was about a week after the flood, you just get, people just descend upon you, and, it’s, FEMA 4
and the EPA 5 and CDPHE 6, and the Army Corps of Engineers, and every possible state and
federal agency comes in!
[Both laugh].
TS: Um, so, it felt like for the first couple weeks I was just doing walking tours.
TM: Oh, with the…
4
Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Environmental Protection Agency.
6
Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.
5
13
TS: With big groups of people. [Laughs]. Showing them and them giving me little tidbits of
information, but mostly going, “Wow, this is—” One person say, one guy from FEMA, or it was
CDPHE and the EPA, two people say that it was worse than, um, the devastation was similar to
what they saw down at Katrina.
TM: Wow.
TS: Here in Jamestown. And then I had a guy from New York, from FEMA, who said that it was
similar to the 9/11 attacks on the World Tra-World Trade Centers. And at that point I realized,
and they all said, “You know, it’s way worse when you’re here on the ground than any photo or
video or flying over top of Jamestown could see.”
TM: Ok.
TS: And we’ve always been very shy of the media here in Jamestown and just kind of wanting to
be left alone in our, our little town. Um, but it became pretty clear to me that, if we were gonna
get the resources to, to help with the recovery that we needed to, ah, get on the radar. Which, we
already were. I don’t think that I had any comprehension of really what was going on. I didn’t
have power. I didn’t have T.V., whatever.
[Background noise: sighing].
TM: Right.
TS: And we were bu-busy just trying to get the basics sorted out for ourselves. So getting solar
set up, and, things like that. [Laughs].
TM: Yeah, just surviving. [Laughs].
TS: And, um, we had one phone in town that, ah, somebody had come in and put in a satellite
phone for us. So people were trying to stand in line, using one phone.
TM: Wow.
TS: Uh, and, so at that point I talked to a couple of people, and we decided that, you know, we
probably need to let people know that they need to come up here and see. So I called Governor
Hinkenlooper, Senator Bennet, and Senator Udall and invited them to come up and see it. And
they did, eagerly. And, um, and have been incredibly instrumental in our community’s recovery,
and very active.
[Background noise: door slams].
TS: The two senators come up quite often, I hear from them regularly, and their staff has been
really helpful in helping our community members navigate the FEMA system, for the mortgage
process.
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TM: Ok. Had you, had you worked with any of those state or federal agencies before with
anything with fires or…?
TS: Worked with Boulder County.
TM: Yeah?
TS: About a fire.
TM: Yeah?
TS: But that’s about it.
TM: Ok. Um, so it sounds like, at least as far as working with the state legislat-legislators goes
that was pretty positive?
TS: Yeah, yeah. I mean our U.S. Senators been amazing, our state legislators have been great.
Um, it’s been, they’ve all, everybody’s been super helpful.
TM: Good.
TS: All the agencies that we’ve worked with. FEMA has been great. Their public assistance
group has been great in helping us recover our, ah, public infrastructure. I’d say that the
individual assistance side, for, for individuals trying to do their recovery effort’s been a bit more
challenging. That process is a little bit more cumbersome, which is unfortunate because many
people are so traumatized that it’s really hard for them to navigate this on their own.
TM: Oh, yeah I bet.
TS: So we, we hired a community advocate to help them.
TM: Ok. To get through that. Um-hm.
TS: Yeah.
TM: And so overall, do you feel like Jamestown, as a town, got the aid it needed and everything?
TS: Oh, we’ve had so much help. Yeah, the Colorado Water Conservation Board came in;…
TM: Um-hm.
TS: …I think it was probably less than ten days. Certainly less than two weeks…
TM: Wow.
15
TS: …after the flood. And, um, Tom Browning, when he c-he came up and met with me and
went back and e-mailed me a PO for $25,000 that night to begin a stream corridor master
planning process, which I didn’t even know what that meant.
[Both laugh].
TM: Yeah!
TS: And then one day, this guy, Jeff Crane showed up, and he was a hydrologist that had been
contracted by Colorado Water Conservation Board to come and help make whatever decisions
we needed to make, from an emergency standpoint, as it related to the stream corridor. So that
we were doing it at least with some knowledge of what we were deciding.
TM: Yeah.
TS: We had so much debris in there. The EPA came up right away. We had mine tailings that
were leaking into Lefthand Creek because it had cut out our, undercut our park, and it’s an old
mine tailings pond. So the EPA came in right away and started shoring up those mine tailings
and pulling the creek away from it so it wasn’t doing more damage.
TM: Um-hm.
TS: So we had a lot of people come in right away.
TM: Yeah, with some of those technical things that…
TS: Yeah.
TM: …you wouldn’t necessarily—
TS: The EPA’s done a phenomenal job. Ah, Steve Way and Paul Peronard are from the EPA’s
emergency response teams, and, ah, have just been phenomenal.
TM: Oh, that’s great, that’s really good. Um, I guess, what lessons have you learned from the
flood as far as, um preparation and planning, maybe management and recovery? So I guess we
can maybe start with preparation and planning.
[Machine or engine in the background].
TS: Um, I think that our community had done a good job in our emergency preparedness, just in
general. No doubt that there are things that maybe we could have done better, or tried to have
foreseen. But, I think that, I think on the whole, we did a really good job. I mean, we lost one
person right at the beginning of the incident, which we couldn’t have stopped.
TM: Um-hm.
16
TS: The fact that we didn’t lose anybody else and that nobody got hurt, with everything that we
went through, I think is pretty phenomenal.
TM: Yeah.
TS: That we airlifted almost 300 people out of here.
TM: Absolutely.
TS: And, uh, we had to build a bridge to get to where the helicopters were coming to. And that
was raging water underneath it, it was, it used to be a road, but it was raging water, and so we
had to build these bridges. Um, but that we got everybody out of here safely, I think is a
testament to, not only our community’s cooperation, um, potentially emergency preparedness,
and ah, us having been through an evacuation before, although we could drive out, but just an
emergency evacuation, how cooperative everybody was. Um, and also just the sheer expertise of
the people that came in to fly us out. The Guard and the Army.
TM: Um-hm.
TS: Um, so I think, I mean I think we learned a lot. I can’t imagine that we could have ever have
planned for this event.
TM: Righ— Yes, something like that is…
[Both laugh].
TS: But I think the planning that we’ve done and the emergencies that we’ve been through as a
community before, um, and just our sense of community, and people working together, made it
so that it was a safe recovery.
TM: Um-hm.
TS: Or response, I guess.
TM: Who was building that bridge? Was that just the community at that point? Still?
TS: Oh yeah.
TM: Had you guys done that before? Or was it just, “We need to do this, let’s give it a try?”
TS: It was just wooden planks.
TM: Ok.
TS: Yeah.
17
TM: That sounds pretty intense.
[Both laugh].
TS: Pretty sketchy. Trying to get suitcase, and animal crates, and children, and…
TM: Everything over!
TS: I think we dropped a few in there, but I think we got ‘em all out.
[Both laugh].
TM: Wow! That’s impressive too! To go back after them. Um, how about, you know, anything
you’ve learned about flood management or just recovery from a water disaster like that?
TS: Yeah. I think I’ve learned a ton. And I think, just some of the lessons that I’ve learned are
just to try to absorb…
[Background noise: man’s voice, crash].
TS: … as much of the information as possible…
[Background noise: man’s voice].
TS: …that people are giving you. Because they’re gonna give you a lot of great information, and
it’s hard to organize it all. But if you can just try to retain bits and pieces of it and know that it
will all come into an organized, ah, sort of, format at some point. But, ah, just taking in as much
information as you can and not feeling— I mean this was the largest disaster in Colorado history.
Our state’s never been through something like this. And certainly Boulder County’s never been
through something like this. And I think leaning on, on people who are experts to get as much
information as possible, and just starting with that, and then tailoring it to what our specific
needs are as, as we learn more, but by no means did I ever expect that I was an expert in any of
this, so that I didn’t need all the help that was coming to me.
TM: Ok.
[Man and woman talking in the background].
TS: I was probably, I felt like maybe I was an expert in what our community’s needs were, but I
wasn’t an expert in how, how to address those needs by any means. So I could tell people what
we needed, but I couldn’t, I couldn’t have done this, I couldn’t have figured this out on my own.
And so, just to-absorbing as much of that information as possible. And I think it’s been, you
know I look at Lyons, and unincorporated Boulder County, and other municip-Longmont, and
Evans, and Milliken, and Larimer, and Weld. And I think how much bigger, like, although we
got hit so hard for a little community, and our recovery is massive relative to the size of our
community. But, relative to the size of the recovery efforts elsewhere, it’s not.
18
TM: Um-hm.
TS: And, um, so because of that we’ve been able to, I think, move pretty quickly. Because we,
we have, you know, projects that are contained, and they have a visible end date. They, they feel
like they’re manageable, even though they’re so massive for our community, you know to
replace 50 percent of our distribution system, our drinking water distribution system, 50 percent
of our roads, a bridge, a set of culverts, we had to realign roads and, and streams. We had to
clean up all the debris out of there; we had to get it out of people’s yards.
TM: Right.
TS: We had to fix almost all of our water treatment plant. Ah, our fire house was destroyed, our
town square was destroyed, and, just, thinking about all of that is pretty massive, but it all feels
manageable. Maybe not all at once, which is probably the overwhelming piece of it! [Laughs].
TM: [Laughs]. Absolutely!
TS: But, but, independently they’re all pretty manageable. And so having people help us with
that has been, ah, a tremendous benefit for us. But I think it’s also allowed us to recover…
[Background noise: man’s voice: …I did…].
TS: …in the timeframe that we need to. But we’re the only community still displaced from this
flood. As a whole.
TM: Ok.
TS: And, because we don’t have any drinking water…
[Background noise: man’s voice: …I’m just furious, you know… took so long…].
TS: … almost ten months into this disaster. And so having this aggressive timeline is really
important for our community so that people can come home.
TM: Absolutely.
TS: I’m thinking that if people aren’t home by the beginning of August, school starts, people
enroll their kids down in Boulder for school, they’re probably not gonna take them out, they’re
probably gonna sign another year’s lease. And after two years after the disaster they’re probably
not ever gonna come home.
TM: Right.
TS: And what makes this place special is the people that live here.
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TM: Mm-hm.
TS: So, otherwise, we’re just another, we’re just another community in the mountains.
TM: Mm-hm.
TS: Ah, so getting ev-getting everybody home, ah, was priority one. And knowing that we
needed to do that by the beginning of August was really important.
TM: Has that timeline been moving along as you expected it to?
TS: Yep. [Laughs].
TM: Very good. That’s great! [Laughs].
TS: The engineers joke with me, they say that ASAP is something that they’ll hear a lot, and
don’t ever ask for a time extension because the answer’s no! [Laughs].
TM: [Laughs]. Ok!
TS: So.
TM: Ok, so the estimates and everything, as far as cost and, and time and everything were
pretty—
TS: I think people have been, have worked with us really well.
TM: Mm-hm.
TS: We’ve got a lot of engineers who have done a lot of pro bono work for us, knowing that we
didn’t have a lot of money up front…
TM: Oh, wow.
TS: …to begin the efforts. Um, we, ah, everybody has bought in on the timelines that we were
working towards, and why it was important for us. It wasn’t that I was just trying to be a slave
driver; it was that it’s important for the community.
TM: Absolutely.
TS: And that if I didn’t advocate for the community then I wasn’t doing my job.
[Background noise: man’s voice: …and they did get that trench in…15th Street sloped back].
20
TS: Ah, and I think that everybody that’s worked with us along the way, we’re just trying to do
what’s right for our community.
TM: Mm-hm.
TS: And, if by doing what’s right for our community it can benefit the greater communities, so
unincorporated Boulder County, that can help advocate for some of the things there. Or, other
people recovering from this disaster, you know that’s just a win-win. But, um, yeah.
TM: Great. Yeah, I was really, again, struck by, it sounded like, just things that I read, even in
September, right after the flood, just the determination, it sounded like, that people had to
rebuild…
TS: Mm-hm.
TM: …and come back. That’s great.
TS: Mm-hm. We had some people that said that, um, one guy said, “I’m gonna be the first
person to rebuild.” And he is!
TM: Hey, good for him!
[Both laugh].
TS: He couldn’t wait for anything, he didn’t, he just got right after it, and he just made it happen.
TM: Wow.
TS: Yeah.
TM: That’s great! Let’s see. How, did you notice any differences between how you were
approaching management and recovery as a member of the community verses how individuals
from outside agencies were coming at it?
TS: Absolutely. I mean, I come at it from my passion for this community.
TM: Mm-hm.
TS: And my, you know my friends and my neighbors…
[Background noise: man’s voice: …so as long as the road is open at the end of the day…].
TS: …that I’ve known for so long. And, um, and having a good sense for what’s, you know that
our community members are what’s important to our community. And, um…
[Background noise: man’s voice: …all the more reason to pull away a little bit…].
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TS: …and so I came at it from that perspective. And I think, you know, as soon as people hear
that, and, whether it’s engineers or construction contractors, or whatever, they get it. They see it.
They spend a day here and they get it. And then pretty soon, I hear them saying the same thing
I’ve said to them...
TM: Mm-hm.
TS: …about why this is important to the community. The next thing I hear them is saying, you
know, them telling their bosses, or their coworkers, or their subcontractors, or whoever it is, why
it’s important that we keep moving like this. [Laughs]. And they get it. They come. They spend a
day with our community, and they get it.
TM: Yeah, that’s all it takes.
TS: Yeah!
TM: A little bit of advocating.
TS: [Laughs]. A little bit of just, giving them, here’s why it’s important, and they come here and
they see it.
TM: Yeah.
[Background noise: footsteps].
TS: I’ve got them crying about it now!
TM: Oh, yeah?
TS: I’m just, I’m not the only one crying now.
TM: [Laughs].
TS: My engineers and my contractors are crying now. [Laughs].
TM: Yeah, yeah. They really understand once they get here. I can see that. Um, what, in the town
itself, I think I read you were creating a new master plan for the town. This was maybe back last
year. Um, what has changed, as far as how things are set up?
TS: So, I think that effort, I think a “master plan” is a misnomer, in terms of what we actually
did.
TM: Mm-hm.
22
TS: So we put in a, um, building permit moratorium, right after the flood, because we didn’t
want people to start building and not build to the ri-correct elevation, or—
TM: Right.
TS: We just wanted to protect them from, being really anxious to get their repairs going but
maybe then putting money into something, into a project, that wasn’t done to code and then
would end up costing them more money later on.
TM: Mm-hm.
TS: So we put a building permit moratorium in place. And, with the stream corridor master plan,
we, um, it was, it was a bit conceptual plan, but a couple of things happened. We got in that
process so early that a lot of the other, um, programs hadn’t been funded yet. And we had not
idea that they were coming, ‘cause I don’t know anything about this stuff.
TM: Right.
TS: And, um, so we started in on a master plan, more of a conceptual master planning process.
But it, um, our end goal was to be able to lift our building permit moratorium in less than three
months.
[Background noise: man’s voice: …testing…].
TS: And so, by January 21st, three months from when we put it in effect. And, in order to do that
we had to remap our fl-our floodplain. We had our pre-flood, regulatory floodplain, and then we
were gonna have our post-flood provisional floodplain. Um, so that people could go ahead and
get started building and, what we did was we modified out building, or our, ah, floodplain
ordinance …
[Background noise: man’s voice: …oh, the girl failing…].
TS: …that said that, you had to follow the rules of the ordinance that said that you have to follow
the rules of the ordinance, and you have to use whichever floodplain, whether it’s the regulatory
or the provisional, ah, the post-flood provisional, whichever’s most restrictive is what you have
to build back to.
TM: Ok.
TS: Um, ‘cause it takes a long time to update your regulatory floodplain.
TM: Mm-hm.
TS: And, we also knew that we would be doing a bunch of construction, both in the stream
corridor, and bridges, and culverts. And that we really don’t wanna map, remap, submit our letter
of map revision for a regulatory, um,…
23
[Background noise: phones rings].
TS: …floodplain map until all that work’s completed. So we did that provisional floodplain
mapping, to lift our building permit moratorium. And then during our stream corridor master
planning effort, the emergenc-or the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) received
11.7 million dollars from Congress for their emergency watershed protection program.
[Background noise: phone rings].
TS: And that was to address exigent or emergency situations to protect existing…
[Background noise: group talking].
TS: …infrastructure, private infrastructure that wasn’t damaged during the flood. So not public
infrastructure, but other homes that hadn’t been damaged in the flood. And, typically it’ll be, the
Army Corps 7 will do the engendering, and then private property owners, through a sponsor will
do, ah, the construction. Because we already had AMEC 8 that had been in, our, um, our stream
corridor master plan engineers had already been in the creek. They have an agreement with, ah,
the NRCS, and they could actually do all of our design work…
[Background noise: conversation].
TS: …for our exigent, ah, to, for the EWP 9 program. And so they did all of that. And we hired
Colt & Steel to do all the construction. So we sort of did our, our master planning process in
three phases. We lifted our building permit moratorium, and did a lot of studying of the
hydrology and hydraulics within our, our stream corridor. Our second phase was, um, sort of a
technical phase, where we designed…
[Background noise: woman’s voice: …yeah, ok, are you able to get out right now?].
TS: …the, um, what we were gonna construct as part of the EWP program. And we also did a
Programmatic Environmental Assessment. And then our third phase was construction of those
EWP protective measures.
TM: Um-hm. Well I know you have a call coming up here.
TS: I do.
TM: But is there anything else you, any other topics you wanted to hit? Anything you wanted to
elaborate on?
TS: Not necessarily.
7
United States Army Corps of Engineers.
AMEC Engineering Company.
9
Emergency Watershed Protection program.
8
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TM: All right. Or anybody else you think we should talk to?
TS: Um, you’re welcome to talk to any of the staff here if you’d like.
TM: Oh, ok.
TS: If they’ve got time.
TM: Ok.
TS: Yeah.
TM: All right, well thank you so much.
TS: You’re welcome.
TM: We really appreciate it.
TS: Do you want me to sign these?
25