Time Hasn’t Swept Away Memories of Fatal Flood

Jim Gray was walking down to the river to start a fire for a barbecue about 3 p.m. when the rain started. By 5 p.m. Gray and his wife, Madeleine, had decided to move the feast for the guests in their 18 cabins indoors.

A couple of hours later “the cabins started crunching together and sliding down the river. I just got everybody out and onto the mountainside across the road,” the ex-Marine recalled on the eve of the 25th anniversary of the Big Thompson River flood.

It was three days before the couple knew that their daughter, Joya, was not among the 144 people, mostly tourists, who died in the July 31, 1976, flood.

Afternoon thunderstorms are virtually a daily summer occurrence on the edge of Rocky Mountain National Park. But this one dumped up to 14 inches--a year’s precipitation for the area--in several hours.

Searchers found bodies until Sept. 26, and five were never found. Eighty-eight people were injured when a river that is barely 18 inches deep in most areas rose to 19 feet, turning homemade private bridges, cars and RVs into battering rams. The flood destroyed 361 houses and mobile homes and damaged 138 others while ripping out stretches of U.S. 34.

The body of Deborah Watt’s 3-year-old son, Aaron, was not found for three weeks. “The bodies that went downstream 20 miles or so were really in bad shape, and identification was difficult,” said Watts.

Her son’s last words to her, as she tried to grab him with an arm bloodied by falling debris were “Mommy! Mommy! I don’t want to die!”

Though she has learned to live with the loss, this year will be a bit tougher.

“It is a sort of a milestone. We won’t want people to forget,” she said.

A memorial, which included a bronze sculpture bearing the names of the dead, was unveiled in July.

“The day started out so beautiful. It was pretty unbelievable when it ended up in such a catastrophic way. Nobody ever thought anything like that could happen in the canyon,” said Watts, whose book, “A Flood of Memories,” was published in May by Legacy Press.

“It was the most eerie thing. It was pitch black and you could hear the propane tanks hiss as they floated by,” said Gray, not one who is easily intimidated. The Vietnam vet once had a sign on his River Bend Store and cabins saying: “Marines don’t die. They go to hell and regroup.”

He didn’t rebuild the cabins, but volunteers planted pine trees to replace those smashed by the flood. One now stands about 25 feet high.

Terry Urista, then a Larimer County sheriff’s captain, rushed to the flood area to help and ended up stranded. “The thing I remember most is how everybody worked together,” said Urista.

He was trying to cross the river on a small bridge to warn people to flee when it collapsed right in front of him. Urista and Deputy James Garcia roamed the area, helping where they could.

“For three days I didn’t know if he was alive,” said his wife, Maryann, who remained at home with their two small boys as flood waters lapped up to the door on their ranch home on the western edge of Loveland.

Colorado State Patrol Sgt. Hugh Purdy never got out.

“I’m stuck. I’m right in the middle of it. I can’t get out. About a half-mile east of Drake on the highway. Tell them to get out of that low area down below,” Purdy told a dispatcher in his final report.

Rescuers looking for Purdy asked Gray for flashlights. “I knew Hugh. He was a wood-turner. He made wooden bowls and things like that and sold them in my store,” said Gray.

Much has been done to make sure that another hundred-year storm could not cause such devastation. The county barred the rebuilding of destroyed homes in the flood plain. Landowners are required to share bridges, instead of each constructing one, meaning less debris if the river does flood.

A year after the flood, signs were posted throughout the canyon, on average only 400 feet wide, warning visitors to climb to high ground in case of flooding.

The National Weather Service has improved its forecasting and warning systems.

The first flash-flood warning for the Big Thompson wasn’t issued until 11 p.m., about three hours before the first flooding was reported. Due to budget problems, its ground observer network was inactive in 1976, and a transmitter at a radar station was down. Now gauges measure water flow near the canyon, and observers help.

Gray has his own warning device, pointing to the river: “The reddish rock over there. When the water goes up above that I start to worry.”