The Big Thompson Flood: Colorado's Worst Natural Disaster

chunks of highway crumbled away into the torrent of water and debris. Many of them climbed the steep hillside, clinging to boulders and trees, finding strength they didn't know they possessed to claw their way higher. In places, the mud was so wet it was liquefied and they slid backwards and had to pull themselves back up. Families climbed with terrified children and others pushed and pulled older and fragile parents and friends.

Those who were trapped in cars drowned as their vehicles were carried away. People who were trapped in houses and motels clung to mattresses that floated them up as the water rose higher and higher, and some of them broke holes in the ceiling to climb into attic crawl spaces. There, they huddled around a brick chimney in the hope it would remain standing while the rest of the building fell apart. Huge trees crashed through walls, sometimes lodging there, sometimes crashing out the other side. A few had enough headroom left to hold on through the night; a few did not.

Watchers on the hillsides were horrified to see cars tumbling through the flood, lights on, tilted crazily against the sky, people trapped inside. Boulders the size of a bus were pushed along by the water, grinding whatever was in their path. The air was thick and sickening with the smell of propane escaping from floating tanks and the crash of thunder was amplified by the sound of tanks exploding as they were thrown against rocks and cars. Pieces of houses and even whole houses were swept through the chaos and now and then the flashing lightning showed a body--human or animal--just part of the debris.

At about 9:40 p.m., when the crest of the flood on the main stem reached the Narrows, most of the traffic had been stopped by Larimer County Sheriff's Deputies who were frantically trying to warn people and rescue anyone they could reach. The ambulance from Loveland had received a call to go into the canyon for an emergency, but had not heard warnings about the crest. With lights and siren going, they ran past the barrier into the Narrows and soon met a 20 foot wall of water that picked the ambulance up and smashed it against the perpendicular rock wall. It held there for a few seconds, long enough for both EMTs to scramble out a window and grab some finger and toe

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