Colorado flooding leaves four dead, 172 people unaccounted for
National Guard troops plucked stranded residents out
of danger by helicopter and hauled them out of an inundated community
in military trucks on Friday as the death toll from the worst floods to
hit Colorado in decades rose to four with 172 people still unaccounted
for.
Taking advantage of a break in torrential rains that have
unleashed floodwaters up and down the state, Guard members rumbled into
the hard-hit town of Lyons through waist-high water and went door to
door to pull out up to 2,000 trapped residents.
"These individuals are not only
coming with just themselves, but with their suitcases and their precious
household items along with their pets and everything, all getting
loaded in the back of these vehicles," said First Lieutenant Skye
Robinson, a spokesman for the Colorado National Guard.
Elsewhere
in the state, search and rescue teams used helicopters to hoist some 200
residents to safety one by one by hovering over flooded areas because
there was no place to land after raging waters washed out roads and
inundated farmland.
The flooding - so intense it toppled
buildings in some places - began overnight Wednesday. It was triggered
by unusually heavy late-summer storms that drenched Colorado's biggest
urban centers, from Fort Collins near the Wyoming border south through
Boulder, Denver and Colorado Springs.
Boulder and a string of
other towns along the Front Range of the Rockies north of Denver were
especially hard hit as water poured down rain-soaked mountains and
spilled through canyons that funneled the runoff into populated areas.
Lyons,
north of Boulder, was virtually cut off when floodwaters washed out
U.S. Route 36, and residents have been without water and power for 48
hours, said Mike Banuelos, a spokesman for the Boulder County Emergency
Operations Center.
At least four people were killed, including a
couple swept away in floodwaters after stopping their car northwest of
Boulder. The man's body was recovered on Thursday and the woman had been
missing and feared dead before her body was found on Friday.
Also
killed were a person whose body was found in a collapsed building near
Jamestown, an evacuated enclave north of Boulder, and a man in Colorado
Springs, about 100 miles to the south, officials said.
On Friday,
Governor John Hickenlooper declared a disaster emergency for 14
counties, reaching from the Wyoming border south to Colorado Springs.
The declaration authorizes $6 million in funds to pay for flood response
and recovery.
In neighboring New Mexico, where floods forced the
evacuation of hundreds of people in Eddy, Sierra and San Miguel
counties, Governor Susana Martinez declared a state of disaster on
Friday making funding available to state emergency officials for
recovery efforts.
The Boulder Office of Emergency Management
listed 172 people as unaccounted for following the floods, stressing
that while they were not yet considered missing or in danger, relatives
and authorities had not been able to contact them.
Authorities said many western mountain communities remained isolated with no potable water or working septic systems.
LANDSCAPE COVERED IN BROWN WATER
In
rural Weld County, where the South Platte River has overflowed its
banks and virtually cut the county in half, aerial TV footage showed
large stretches of land covered in brown water. Many homes and farms
were largely half-submerged.
Weld County sheriff's spokesman
Steve Reams said nearly every road in and around a cluster of towns that
includes Greeley, Evans and Milliken had been closed by flooding,
including bridges that were washed out.
Rescue teams were
evacuating some stranded residents by boat, while some farmers managed
to move to high ground on their tractors, Reams said in an interview
with the Denver-area ABC television affiliate.
The flooding was
the worst in the state since nearly 150 people were killed near Boulder
in 1976 by a flash flood along the Big Thompson Canyon.
The size
and scope of property losses remain unquantified, with county assessment
teams unlikely to begin preliminary evaluations of the damage at least
until early next week, once water has receded, said Micki Frost,
spokeswoman for the Colorado Office of Emergency Management.
Video: Flood tears through parts of Colo.
Video: Flooding intensifies after record rains
Raw video: Floods force thousands to flee
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