Lyons Colorado Cutoff

Yesterday in the space of about 20 minutes a small town in Colorado northwest of Denver was cut off by natural disaster.

There are roughly 2000 residents in the area.  Right now there are no roads.  There is no water.  There is no functioning sewage system.  There’s no electricity.  There’s no way out and no way in.

For the last 30+ years of my life I have tried to convince people to take time to “be prepared”, not unlike teaching the Boy Scouts.  Not unlike teaching military members.  I’ve tried and been laughed at over and over and over again for being a “kook” or a “survivalist nut” or asked “Why are you so worried?  Nothing is going to happen!”

Well, I live in Colorado.  In the past 25 years we’ve had floods, blizzards, rock falls, small quakes, major forest and wild fires and we’ve had Biblical rain before (many years ago it rained for 15 straight days without stopping! I doubt a lot of people remember that far back).

This is precisely the kind of survival situation I’ve talked about, and been laughed at over.

I’m not here to say “I told you so”, I’m here to remind people that this happened within a few miles of a major city (Denver) and it could easily happen anywhere.

Now, isolated you say?
No, yesterday evening an entire town up in that area was evacuated as a damage broke and 30′ high wall of water barreled down on Boulder Colorado. (Not that it would matter much to me if it washed the side of the mountain clean of the idiot anti-gunner, hippie Liberals dicks that live there….) but fortunately for Boulder, the water dissipated just before it arrived there.  Could have been significantly worse.

The road closures also affect Colorado Springs and Manitou Springs in the central part of the state.  Most of Highway 24 is gone.  Highway 24 is the only real road that takes you over the pass from Colorado Springs up the pass to the far side.  (There are other roads, but they are not very good).

It’s been raining for two days.  Oh, and we’re “in a drought”.

Whatever.

I hope this lesson can be used by everyone.  Think of the problems that can happen in your own area given weather conditions, rivers, roads, dams, flooding, snow, ice, rock slides and even tornadoes.  If it can happen in Lyon Colorado it can happen anywhere.

Related articles

• Boulder area calls for thousands more evacuations (bostonherald.com)
• Colorado floods: 3 dead, 1 missing, rescue efforts continue amid rain (fox43.com)
• Lyons Flooded: Colorado Town ‘Completely Isolated,’ With No Sewage, No Fresh Water (huffingtonpost.com)
• Devastating Flooding in Still-Isolated Lyons, Colorado (blogs.discovermagazine.com)
• Colorado flooding cuts off mountain towns, kills 3 (fresnobee.com)
• Road closures in and out of Lyons; boil water advisory issued (kdvr.com)