This week is the 20th anniversary of the Spring Creek Flood, a flash flood event that dumped 14" one evening and took 5 lives here in town.
I was here and it was a wild night; college kids paddling their kayaks around flooded parking lots with their car stereos blasting while just a block down people were trying not to get washed away just crossing the street.
The ordinarily tiny stream (with a running start you can jump it in most places) swelled so rapidly that it washed away half a trailer park- that's where the loss of life occurred- undermined railroad tracks and derailed a train, which effectively cut the city in half and played havoc with emergency services getting to calls, caused a fire in a shopping center, flooded streets, cars, homes and businesses all across town...
And then in a few hours it was gone, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake.
Earlier that summer, the City Engineering Department had actually won a national award for flood preparedness in recognition of the work they'd done to mitigate a projected 100 year event.
That night was considered a thousand year flood (I'm not so sure) and they took a lot of heat for not preventing the widespread damage and fatalities I mentioned above. I'm firmly of the opinion that if they had NOT done a good job, many more would have perished that night.
A disaster was declared and Federal grants poured in, basically a blank check to do whatever it would take to prevent such a flood from ever killing again. They've done an excellent job, turning much of the floodplain into parks, open space and trails, upgrading construction requirements where necessary, integrating a multi stage, 'defense in depth' system of flood controls throughout the course of the creek and its watershed.
Four years ago, we had another event that dumped over 6 inches of rain in only a few hours. There was widespread damage to municipalities and roads all over the northern front range- except here in Ft Collins. Not one building was damaged. Traffic was unaffected. People actually thought the storm had missed us. The truth was that the work done had turned a potentially deadly situation into a non event.
This is an excellent example of how government CAN and SHOULD work. All that talk about how government is incompetent and can't take care of our citizens is a poisonous falsehood, cooked up by those who would shortchange America's schools, services and infrastructure in favor of tax cuts for the rich. Don't let them get away with such lies.
TAX THE RICH. We'll all prosper- even the wealthy!