THE LIBRARY THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF COLORADO 200 Fourteenth Avenue, Denver 80203

Name of ·donor: &t ft~ Address'. ~Ft. l/r.5~ Descr1pt1oh of g1ft:

Restriction (time or use):

DEED OF GIFT

I hereby give to the State Historical Society of Colorado, for its use and benefit, without restrictions as to use or dispostion (except as noted above), and inc uding all literary and property rights, the property described a~ove. Date;j , r: · - ,;:( /, / CJ / Signature J/ c/? ~it/

RECEIPT

Accepted for the Society by:

Date ------Signature------~----

Restrictions noted ------Title ------M· This is an interview with Mr. Bill Wells. I'm at his inn in Glen Haven, the date is August 21, 1976, and my name is David McComb. Well, let's kind of start at the beginning. It started raining down here. And how you didn't ... the river might have been rising, but when did" you first realize there was going to be some major flooding? W: First, I'd gone into town }n the evening . after the dinner hour started ... to pick up some things for the restaurant, Came back, about, what was it, Ted? About 6:00, 6:30, and I was sitting here at the desk doing some work, and just suddenly the rain just came down. I mean, it was not pouring or anything. When I had driven into town, it was a sunny, partly cloudy day. That's all it was. M: Was it unusua 1 for this country for something 1 ike· that?

W: Oh, no, no, because when it started to rain, we thought, 11 Well, here's our

little shower. 11 M: The afternoon shower. W: Right. And we've had heavy rains before, but the last five minutes at the most and go on, you know, just sudden downpours, mostly what's normal up here is a shower every afternoon in the summer when the sun goes down, or it'l1 even rain when the sun's shining. So I didn't pay too much attention to it, and it's coming in awfully

hard, and Ted [Hanes] came through and said, 11 Hey, it's raining, 11 and I

said, 11 You're kidding, 11 and I just looked out, and he said, 11 No, it's

raining in here. 11 The water was starting to come through the roof up there, and we went and looked out the back door and it was really coming down, and I think Ted

said, 11 I love rain, 11 or something like that. And I was just really, raining in the mountains, and then it just kept going, and it just kept raining and 2 raining and raining. Well, Ted w.ent back to the kitchen, and started cooking, and pretty soon the water started coming in the floor in there, and I think you asked me to take over while you went up to see if we could divert the water that was coming down, and it was really coming down.

And then we mopped u~ the floor, and it stopped for a minute, or rather the water stopped coming in for a minute, and we went on cooking, and the girls kept on serving and taking orders, and then the water started coming in again, only this time it just poured in, every place it could pour in. M: Was it coming through the walls?

W: Yes. M: Ceiling? Under the doors? W: No, it was coming through the walls. And we got a rug vacuum and started pumping the water out of the food preparation area back there, and pretty soon we couldn't keep up with the vacuum, and two of us, three of us were down in there with measuring cups and saucepans trying to dip this water up as-it was coming in, then it started coming in through the walls here in the office., Now this was the water from the hillside behind us. M: Washing down hitting the back of the inn. W: Right, and so I thought I'd better check upstairs, and I went up in the apartment, which is on the south side of the building, and the rain was not only coming down in torrents, but the wind was blowing. It was lashing against the house, and we'd never had that before, of rain and wind to­ gether. So when we came back down, we could see that the water was starting to come up in the stream, and then it was coming through so fast in the walls, in the kitchen, just like faucets opened up, and Ted went over to get a . ~~

3 ..}

hose. We thought maybe we could catch it and put in into the drain, and that didn't work and then finally Doris [Wells' wife] came through and said, "I'm gonna seat somebody else," and I said, "Don't until we get this

water out of here," and she said, 11 lf we don't seat them, you're gonna be here all night,'' and she didn't know what was going on; the guests didn't know what was going on. Except that it was raining outside. Well, then the electricity went off, and we had to stop what we were doing. We couldn't keep up with the water, and we looked out, and here was the river in the street already. And then it just kept going higher and higher and higher, and roaring. We got the .•. then we knew it was more than just a rainstorm. Ex­ cept we didn't know how bad it was, 'cause there was no lights, you know, the phone was out, the power was off, and we saw the water coming into the front entry, so we got laundry bags and linens and stuff and tried to stop up the door, and that worked until someone decided they were going to leave. And they opened the door and let the river carrie roaring in. But it was it was roaring out there so loud, you know, you just could hardly hear, it was just a roar.· M: Was it a steady roar? W: Just a constant roar. M: Rolling roar or was it like thunder, or ... ? W: Well, then the thunder arid lightning was along with it. Like a strobe light going, you know, out there, and great huge crashes of thunder, and then we saw the gas tank go and crash into the garage, and then our two cars were parked together over across at • M: Is that a propane tank? W: Yes, right, p.ropane tank, and then we saw our two cars come loose, and float maybe 25 feet and then they got hooked together, and mine got hooked 4 on the fence, and then the next thing we knew, his car was gone, and another car down the street went, and we finally were brave enough to step out- side and then we saw the Town Hall had moved down and crashed into the grocery store, and it was just a roaring, roaring river. I've never seen such power that this water had when it was going. It was just unbelievable, the speed that it was going through in here. Well, then the guests got a little panicky when they could smell the gas; we lit candles in here, you know, and we had the ... teasing them; somebody

went over and played the piano and 11 Stormy Weather, 11 of all things (laugh­ ; ng). M: How many guests did you have? W: Oh, there \.-Jere between forty and fifty in here; it was the house guests and dinner guests. M: Is that a full house for you? W: Well, yes, I'd say it was. Pretty near. OW: Later in the evening, people came in off the street after the road had .. W: Yes, the refuge, we even had two dogs in here in the corner. You know, I remembered, Tippy came downstairs that night, and she didn't pay any atten­ tion to those dogs at all. M: You mean these are dogs that just . ? W: You know, with the owner, they were out and so they came in, they spent the night. Sitting up. We put everybody to bed that we could. Because when we went out then, after the rain had let up, and it had calmed down a little bit out there, and we started to walk up the road and there you were walking up like four or five feet of silt right in the middle of the road. And we looked at the parking lot, and all the cars in the parking lot were covered with silt that had washed down from the hill up here.

M: You mean, literally covered, in four or five ... ? 5 W: Yes, they were just covered, and inside and everything .... M: Under the windshields. W: Yes, and well, that came down from Piper's Meadow up here, there's a ravine that comes right down from up there, and that hit up here with a roaring waterfall coming down there, joining with West Creek, right out here in front. And we think the main force was between the inn on this side of the hill and then our cabins over across rather than in the river itself, which was on the other side of the cabins. ·Because it came right

through here, and that's how it 1 ifted the Town Ha 11 up, and pushed it over. And picked up, Ernie's car was on this side of the road, wasn't it? And it picked it up as it swirled this way, and went on down, and it was

a van. We saw it later down the road, oh, I'd say half a mile, mile, maybe, and it looked like it had been picked up and literally smashed against a rock. It was about this thiCk, smashed to nothing. M: You mean just like it was crumpled? W: Yes. Well, anyway, we got out there, and the local fire chief came down the hill. He'd gone up as far as he could go, and realized that the road was out up there, because there were cavities in the Switchbacks about thirty feet deep and fifty feet across, you know, gouged out like that. And so we got over to the gas tank and shut it off. You know, it's amazing how fast that water went down. I mean, it just was up here, did its damage, and then it was gone. M: You mean the road got dry then? W: Then we could walk up and down the road, I mean, there was just a little bit of water left on it, see.

M: Not dry, but I mean the river wasn't on it anymore.

W: Right. 6

M: The river where it ought to be. W: Right, it had just gone. And so we came back in and got everybody to bed, and I had no idea what time it was, 4:30, something like that. Got every­ body situated and bedded out for the night, and we slept on the floor down here because somebody even took our bed, and just, and then the next morning, we started about, oh it was about 6:00 I guess we all got up around here and went out to check on what was going on. And first thing we had to do was to get some toilets because our water was off, and of course, with that many people in here, I don't know how many stools there are in the place, but every one of them had been used and full and not able to flush them, so we got the restrooms from the Town Hall opened up over here, they're just outhouses, really, with a vault in them. Got them opened up, for people to use, and it was still raining on Sunday. And then they came in with . . M: Let me ask you something right here at this point in time. You go outside, you know, the sun's coming up, and you can see what's going on, and things are a wreck. W: Except there's no sun coming up; it was just daylight. _ M: Just daylight? W: Yes, the light out there's just getting light. M: Just enough .. W: Yes. r~: What are the condition of people? Well, are they hysterical, are they panic­

stricken, are they stunned, are they curious, are they ... ? W: We had both. We had the best and the worst came out in people. It was

real funny. And we had those that said, 11 Now what can I do? Let's do something. I can't stand here. I've got to do something,'' so I said to one

guy, ''Okay, go over and clean that outhouse out so that . . 11 because it 7

w~as full of silt. So they took shovels and got some water out of the river and washed them out, and fixed them up for us to use, and then there were those that were so worried because they had reservations at a resort in Estes, and

they coul dn 1 t . . they had a 11 their 1 uggage with them in the car, they

just stopped here for din~er, and they just had to take everything with them, and they didn't know how they were going to get out, and one lady

wanted to know if they could rent a helicopter to come in and get them. Well , no way to get in touch with a he 1 i copter to come in and get them so that they caul d take a 11 of their 1uggage with them when they left, you see. And the rest of the people knew that they couldn't, like, take their

· cars out, and we, course, we took a Tl their keys.· We had people that would insist they pay us for sleeping on the floor, and then other people made nasty remarks about, well, they had to sleep on

the floor, and ''How much do I owe you for sleeping on the floor?" type attitude. See, we had both of them going. Really nice people that were really concerned about what had happened, and those that were,·the worst came out in them, really, they were very concerned with themselves at that point,

you know, and "How am I gonna get out of this situation?" not, you know, "My goodness, what had happened to everybody in this whole ar.ea,'' you know, they didn't even think about that. M: So you had all kinds of people. Were there any that were, say, panic- stricken or hysterical or anything like that? W: No, not really, H: Yes, W: Well, was there some now? [To Ted Hanes.] 8 H: You could see that they were shuffling, trying to get helicopters, W: Oh, to get them out, yes. H: Fighting for a helicopter or fighting over which car they could take out and how much luggage they could take out.

W: Oh~ yes, yes. There was that. M: You mean when they were trying to get out on their own. W: There was nobody that we had to give a shot to to calm down, though, or anything like that, that we know of. H: Couldn't give them tranquilizers. Little shot of whiskey (laughing). W: And the, next morning, we made, we picked the ice cubes that night from the ice machine and melted all that down so we'd have some water. And, but we couldn't make coffee, and that was the worst part of it, there was no coffee for anybody, and we got out everything we had like pop and this kind of thing. M: This was on Sunday. W: That's right, on Sunday morning, trying to decide what to do. We were waiting for w-ord on what we could do. M: You must have been thinking about your food supply, water supply, and gas. W: Yes, all these things.

M: You started to think, 11 What are we gonna do with all these people? 11 W: Yes. M· Did you make any decisions about that? W: No, the main decision was, okay, what can we get out for these people now? To eat. Or to keep them busy with something. And we did have honey, who was the sheriff who came in that morning? [Do:ug B,utow enters. ] :B: We di·dn't have a sheriff in here till Tuesday. 9 W: No, there was somebody came in that morning to, Doug on .... B: We coordinated both programs from Sunday and Monday. We didn't have any sheriff, we had CBers. The only way we got or insulin or anything vJe needed was through the CBers and the Red Cross right up here, but until then we were working everything between you and I and we were doing mostly on ourselves and our own efficiency of coordinating our thoughts, our idea.

The sheriff, Billy Banks, showed up with a body I had in the morgue on

Tuesday. With a little Cat [Caterpillar] that they had to carry it out with because they couldn't get anything across those washes. It was Wed­ nesday before they could drive a four-wheel across there. Approximately. W: We had . . . .

B: Billy Banks was the first sheriff, first regular p~id sheriff that came

into the area was Billy Banks, and he coordinated what I had in medical supplies, which we moved out here up to the restaurant, and the bodies that we had in the morgue that I'd made. W: The first thing that we were aware of, there was one lady that was staying here that was a nurse, and . B: And one paramedic. Two nurses and a paramedic. W: And B: You had one with [Muffled.] and Mr. Stevens was diabetic. W: Yes, we had a diabetic. B: And for my wife and for one person back in Fox Creek. W: They got a message into the druggist, and he came to the top of the switch­ backs, and we went up and met him and brought the insulin down here, and they set up some kind of a

M: Did these people come to you, these guests and say, 11 Look, I'm diabetic,

I need insulin 11 ? 10 W: Oh, yes, they. [Is interrupted by Butow.] B: We had CO!Qrdination in this thing they're ·thinking, Don't get the im­ pression we didn't coordinate. We had word between the people and the guests and the people up here trying to get out, that were sick. We had people with multiple sclerosis,· with heart attacks, we had a cardiac uh, that we had to take care of. I had medicine down here by 7:30, backpacked over the hill. His

daughter tried tb get out of here with horseback, to ~et medicine because they weren't that sure they'd get down over the hill. Susie was instru­ mental in the first rescue deal with horses. M: You guys are going to get the interview confused, what I need to do is catch you on another tape. B: Oh, I didn't know you were taping. I'm sorry, Billy. M: Yes, let me get ... don't go away, you got something. B: I didn't know you were taping. I thought we were just having a conversation. M: No, we're taping this for the State Historical Society. B: Oh, I'm sorry. M: L·et me get his story; then we'll get your story. [Butow leaves after conversation about garbage.] Who was this, then? W: He is, he is Doug Butow, and he was the only one of any official capacity in the Glen that night, in that he is our fire chief in our volunteer fire department, and . . . . Let me close the door. M: And now we'·re back Sunday morning, thinking about getting organized; you're thinking about your food and your . . . . W: And we set out ro 11 s and things that we had here, you know, that, of course, they weren't .refrigerated anymore, and we set those out, and we set out juice and dry cereal and milk and stuff to keep people occupied, anyway, 11 while we were trying to decide what to do and what was going to happen next, because we had no idea what was going to happen next because there was no communication with the outside at all; there was no telephones. Somewhere we discovered that one of our guests was a . . he had to have insulin, and somebody else down here in the Glen had to have insulin, somebody came in, maybe it was Butow, I,don't know. It was Butow? [To Doris.] And he had a CB in his car, and he went to the bottom of the switchbacks, and could call over the hill to a fellow on other side, and yes, Susie did ask if she could take a horse into town, but as far as they got was the Switchbacks, because it was so slippery and wet. M: Horse couldn't get through there.

W: No, it was just too wet to climb the hill, because_, well, yes, and they had to go straight up a hill to get around it, see, and that's as far as they got. And, but they did get the message into town, and a druggist in town got to the switchbacks, walked down, and we met him there, and brought the insulin back down here. And by that time somebody had . . this, paramedic,

I don't know where she came from exactly, she wasn't one of our dinner guests, was she,, honey? OW: I don't remember that. W: Do you remember, with the kinky hair?

OW: No, she wasn't. W: But the other woman was.

OW: Yes. W: And they organized a first-aid center there, back in the bar. And we brought a cot in and some clean linens, and they set up a big table back there with a sheet on it, and we got lamps back there and what little water we had, and you know, a few things like this so they could take care of someone in an 12 eme,rgency, And then someone brought in medical supplies later that day. DW; That was from the helicopter. W: The helicopter. M: That comes in in the afternoon?

W: Rtght, H: 'Bout 11:00? W: Yes, it was in the morning, right, and they brought the stuff in, and then it was so much c·onfusion that nobody really knew what was going on except that the word was out that sometime during the day the helicopters would be coming in to evacuate the people. And before that, some of them wanted to get out right away, and they were willing to walk from the bottom of the switchbacks to the top. So we were driving, Ted was driving them up in the Scout, Our Scout was sti 11 running, No, it was parked way up against the side of the street over here, and the water came up through the floorboards in that but it didn't wash it away. And so anyway, we were taking those people up, those that wanted to walk out, and by afternoon it was raining again, and then I remember we made some ditches across the back up here in case it happened again. This was when all these different authorities started to come in. There were two. I don't know who they were, but [they] were running around

here like scared chickens telling everybody that they should get out~ if you didn't, pack some stuff and get ready to climb to high country, and they \•Jere going to break into the house up here on the hi 11 so we caul d get into there where it was dry, and we were just sitting here, going, you know,

''What are you tal king about?'' You know, 11 What are you doing?"

And then the sheriff did come in because 11 Chief" [Jenista] was one 13 of them, and said that they were trying to get everybody out of here they could one way or another. Walk out, anything, because they didn't know what was· going to happen again, because it was clouding up and the rain was coming down again. And there was also a doctor in here, and it was McGraw's brother, hts name was Dr. McGraw, Frank McGraw's brother. And he had a bag; I qon't know how he got in here. Horse, horse. He came in by horse. And he took this one lady's blood pressure, to see if

she could walk o~t, she was an older lady, and she didn't think she could,

and talked to several people and was urgi~g them, you know, maybe they could walk out, they'd better. get out. And then finally "Chief" [Marion Jenista] came in and that's when the staff decided they'd better get out, and he said everybody should get out. And I decided I was not going. Doris said she was not leaving without me,

and so I said, "Okay, I' 11 go," and I got my coat and came down and got to the door and I said, "I'm staying." "This was just to get you out of here," and ''Go on," and we finally got the rest of the guests out, even those two ladies that wanted to rent a helicopter. M: They went out by helicopter? W: No, they walked right out, because when "Chief" came in, he said, this is "Chief''[Marion] Jenista from Estes, he said, "I don't think the helicopter is gonna make, cause it's starting to rain and I don't think they can land. You better get out any way you can." We 11 , we fi na 11 y got everybody out of here, and then the he 1i copter did come in, and take out I don't know how many people, later that evening. They could get in, and they got some of them out. And that night the town was quiet. M: Let me ask you again. I've heard that on that Sunday, when they announced 14 that the helicopters would be evacuating people, all kinds of people just

kind of showed up. Came coming out ~f the hills, you know, people you

didn't even imagine were around. I~ that right? W: Well, yes. See, this whole area is full of summer homes up here, Not just permanent residences. And a lot of people were up here for the weekend. There are a lot of weekend cabins. I don't know how many, but there was over a hundred right back in here . . H: That you wouldn't notice, just driving around. W: Oh, yes, they're back up the side roads, you see. M: Okay,' that's where those people are coming from. W: Right, right. And so they got everybody out that night that they could get out, and the rest of the people were up high and dry, and the bridges were washed out, so they just decided to stay there, see, I don't know if they even heard that they should be evacuated, 1 don't know, for nobody ever got back to them. M: Why did you decide to stay? W: Because I was not about to leave this place open for anybody to walk in and especially w·ith him [Doug Butow] confiscating this right and left, see, I wasn't going to have people using my place without me here, because we had enough damage; I didn't want to see it torn to pieces unless I was here. I And I thought if I were here anyway, then if something did go wrong, I could take care of it, or; if it was gonna wash away that second night, I wanted to be here to see it. m~: And Ted stayed with you. W: Yes, and Ted stayed. So as long as Ted stayed, why it was all right, But

Ted 1 s wife and our children and the staff, everybody went. They a 11 went

home-~which. of the kids were here baby-sitting? Saturday, T.J. 's daughter

was here babysitting for us, and that was for the 1 itt1 e guy [Stewart, We 11 1 s 15

five-year-old son.] that just walked in here. And anyway, we decided to

stay.

DW: Well, there really wasn't sanitation. W: Right, it ~ad no water, and the place was beginning to stink already, It was stinking because of the stools and all of the garbage out front, every-

thing. So .

M: But your inn is in pretty good shape compared to everything else.

W: Yes. Right. All we got was water damage on the first floor here. Well, I

say all we got. Well, yes, after that, like we discovered that one of the

support pos·ts in the addition out here that sunk underneath so that our

doors wouldn't close upstairs. The water came in on the second floor.

See, the inn is built into the hillside and you can walk off each

floor ... right onto the hill, then in the second floor, the hail tore

the heck out of the roof, and one corner up there and it flooded one of the

rooms just coming through the dormer window that's on there.

OW: vJ~ll, our cabins are across there.

W: Yes, and of course the cabins across the street are ours.

M: You 1ost those?

W: Well, they're pretty badly damaged, and they were this deep in silt,

[ind·icates] you know, and muck, and gunk and the stairs going to the up­

stairs, it just sheared it off, see it took the whole patio and every­

thing, and of course, it was a 11 landscaped with 1 awns and flowers and it

was replaced with boulders. It's all boulders over there, there's nothing

but boulders. Anyway, we spent the night Sunday night here by ourselves.

H: Making plans to open in two weeks. [Laughter.]

W: Right, and we were sitting at the table, trying to decide how soon we were

going to op,en, what we were going to do with the staff, how long we were

going to keep them on, how we might, 11 Well, we can keep them on for room and . ' ' 16

board for two weeks until we got open, see, 11 we 11, it's been three already, and you know, there's nothing ... we haven't quite gotten there yet. But then we got up the next morning, and the helicopters were coming

in with people, and so by noon that day, there were more people in hel~e than we had taken out the day before. M: These were the experts, tbe forestry people . . . ' the she riff's . . . . W: Yes, everybody was an expert, see, everybody was an expert. And the first thing we got was ... well, of course, we got the nurse, and she was troop- ing through and trooping through, and she was bringing this bunch through and another bunch through, and they just kept doing this, see, and finally we got the National Guard, that was on Monday, National Guard came in, and they wanted some place to sleep, and then we're. trying to decide where to a put them, and Doug [Butow] came in with mountain rescue team, so we had, I' what, fourteen on Monday night? Of course, we still didn't have any water, and stools were still full of crap, and you know, and mud all over. M: No refrigeration. W: No refrigeration at all. No, nothing. We didn't dare open our freezers because we had several thousand dollars worth of meat-in there, and we didn't even open the door on them. M: And nothing to cook with, I assume. W: Yes, we had propane. M: Oh, you had propane. W: Yes, because the tank that went was over on the other side of the road with the cabins, and another one over here, in that ... the main building, and it was okay. So we still had gas to cook with, and it was on Monday, we decided we were going to clean up Saturday night's dishes. Because of the inn. Be­ cause the ... everything had gone off, see, and there was no way to do the 17 dishes, there was no \'later, there wasn't anything. So we decided to clean up the kitchen; and somebody, Fawn Valley sent us down that generator, to light al.ight bulb, so we hooked it up, and they were going to put it back in the bar. And we said, "Well, until you need it back in the bar, we're going to work in the kitchen." Because it was so contaminated in there, you know. With all the water coming, and then, all of Saturday nights' dishes were

in there, so we got rain water and carried it in, and, because I believe it was still raining on Monday. M: Monday's a bad day for weather, W: Yes, and we could put the big garbage can under the downspout, and we got water to wash the dishes, And that was quite a process, but we di.d it anyway. And got that fairly well cleaned up, and in the meantime here were people coming in, and people and people and people, and they were going to set up a headquarters or something, and they were going to see if their intercoms were working, you know, and then another group would come in. One group started to come in, and then Ted said, "I've had enough of

these people," and he met them at the back door, and said, 11 What's your business?" and they said, "We want to check your medical supplies," and so Ted said, "Okay, but only your medics can come in, then," I guess there were six in the group, and all six of them came in. And, you know, just tromped through, and of course nobody took their boots off or anything, but I suppose they thought, "Well, it's already gone, so they

won't care. 11 M: That's why you have these signs about muddy W· Well, we already set that one there, but we put them on the front door. H: There's a certain disaster phenomenon. May I interject something? One thing that 1 thought was interesting, and Bill and I noticed because we'd 18 been here the whole time, and that is that when people come into a di.saster area, they seem to think that since everything is ruined, nothing matters anymore. They would throw litter on the streets. They could come in the inn with mud up to their knees and plop down. They'd put their feet up on things. They just assumed that since it was a disaster and everything, that every­ thing was destroyed. And people like Bill and Doris Wells wanted to keep what they had to restore, and we had a terrible time keeping people from thinking, "Everything's wrecked, so what the hell difference does it make?" M: And you were going to open up in two weeks. You're cleaning up, and they're getting everything dirty. W: Yes, we worked all the time. The prime example of it was, well, on Friday night, the night before the flood, Doris and I had the same birthday, see, it was my fiftieth, and we had two dozen red roses on the table out there. And this one gal, supposedly one of the nurses, of course, she was with this other nurse, anyway, comes tromping through to check on medical supplies, and as she was coming back through the dining room, she said, "Oh, beautiful flowers,'' and she started picking them and stuffing them in her

pocket. I was sitting over at one of the other tables, and I said, ··~~ould you 1 ike to have the table to go with it?" you know, I had just had it up to here. Well, she made some snotty remark and put them back and walked out, but that was the example in case that nothing really mattered, just like they got into the grocery store over here. We 11 , Mike, the kid that runs it, said, "Oh, it's a mess, to hell with it; we'll bulldoze it down," and he left the door open. Well, people were going in there and taking stuff out, and they were 19

getting the beer an,d tossing the beer cans . . . we had more 1 i tter on

Main Street from p,eople getting stuff out of that store over there and

just tossing it out, you see. It's like Ted said, people think, .. Well,

nothing matters anymore. 11 Nothing really matters anymore.'' Nothing really

matters, because it's been destroyed. We 11 • • . •

H: Did to us.

W: Yes, it did, it sure did.

H. I got very defen.sive about it.

M: Lo,ok. What did you do? You're sitting there, you've got the only place

that's intact, the only thing that can really work, you've got something to

cook with, you know, you 1 ve got cooking facilities, and so all these ex­

perts come in, and they are going to gravitate right toward you. What do

you do?

W: Well, we had mixed emotions about it, because if you're a survivor in an

area, and your building is still standing, you are bound to take care of

people when they come in.

And we were more than willing and ready to take care of anybody that

needed us. So we had no way of sifting out those that didn't need us and

those that did. They just all came in, and as it ended up, very few of them

really needed us. They were just coming in, as far as we could see, they

were just coming in to see what happened to us. Really, to see what hap­

pened here.

We 11 , the same way that they were tromping through the town ha 11 and

the grocery store, it was just to see what happened. You know. Well, if

we had had an erne.rgency, I don • t know how we'd have even gotten them in

here, because there were so many goi'ng in and out, see, and they were just·

j amrned i. n here. 20 M: Okay, let me ask you about something else. l don't mean to be offensive by this questions, but it's something that ·needs to be asked. What did you do about charging people? You're putttng out coffee and supplies, and this that and the other thing. And providing them services. W: No·, we just pat the stuff out. I remember the sheriff, there was a sheriff

in here that morning, and 1 can't remember who it was, but he said, ''Don't let anybody have any booze, any liquor from the bar, because it'll dehydrate them, and you haven't got any water. So give them all the pop they wanted, or all the fruit juice, or tomato juice, or whatever you've got to give them for liquid, instead of liquor," Well, of course, all this stuff, we just put out, because, good heavens, we don't .. at that time, you don't think about your inventory or how I'm going to get paid for it or anything like that, you're only thinking about taking care of the people that need something at the moment, see. Well, then as time wore on . M: Same way with the people sleeping on the floor and so forth. W: Right. As time went on, then you began to realtze, well, probably when Doris came back, was about the time we got our power back, we got a phone in, this was what, on Thursday of that week, Wednesday or Thursday, you came down Wednesday night. So then by Thursday, these people were still here, and, well, at first we compared it to the disaster we had here twelve years ago. We had a forest fire here, just over the hill. Okay, and that was our very first year here, and we were scared, so bad we had the runs, you know, but there was one person in charge, a forestry man, everything they got from us was with a voucher, so we knew where to bill it to, and we were just so grateful for those fire fighters being in here 22 that we didn't even think about it, didn't think about getting paid, all we wanted to do was to help them out, put the fire out, to save our place, see. And you had time to think a little bit there. Well, this was no time to think, and we didn't really approach anybody ab6ut getting paid for, like the lodging, until what's-his-name, the repre­ sentative that, [Jim] Llo¥d came by and we mentioned it to him, and he

said . he wrote it down, and he said, "Well, I'll see if we can't find some way that yo·u can get reimbursed for this." Well, if we don't, we don't. DW: That night was the first night we hadn't had people staying. W: Right, Since the flood. There's always been somebody staying here. M: Free of charge? W: Right. We haven't charged anybody. Okay, we haven't changed the bed linens for them, and we haven't cleaned the rooms for them, we had no staff, but still, thel were allowed to stay here, and the first people that came in . we 11, then we housed the deputies, two deputies, and we were happy to have them in here, because it meant protection down here, we could sleep at night, see. And they stayed up all night so that we didn't have to worry about them. Well, then the Mennonites came in, I forget what day it was. DW: We also had Job Corps. W: Yes, we had Job Corps staying here, too. M: Mennonites stayed with you? W: Yes, then the Mennonites came in, and they had no place to stay, and they spent one night up at the old church camp up here in sleeping bags, and it was cold and damp, and they had no water. Of course, this place had been closed, so ... and they were kind of using our ... we had a phone then, and they were using this phone as their communications, and we just asked them if they didn't need some beds, you know. We didn't have any linens, 23 but they could use the beds and the rooms and get in here where it was warm and dry, anyway. DW: Take a hot shower. W: Yes, and w.e had our ... we had an old storage tank up behind,holds about three thousand gallons when the inn was built, they would pump water up from the stream, and let jt gravity feed back down. Well, we finally got the old pump going. H: Underwater three days. W: Three days under water, H: Put a hair dryer on it, and pumped it in, and it started to work. [laughter.] W: The room it was in was full of water, so we had to get our sump pump going, and the. only way to get the sump pump_ going first was with the generator. So someone finally got us a generator down here that would run something more than a l_ight bulb. We rented one, cause the police in Estes wouldn't let a generator come down. There was a big one right at the top of the hill for us, so we wouldn't lose our meat in the freezers, and the police wouldn't let them bring it down because there were butane tanks down all over down here, they said, and they didn't want any electricity down here. So we finally_ got one from the Rent-A 11 in Estes, and they brought it to the top of the hill, and we got it and brought it down, which was enough to run the sewer pump, so we could pump the septic tank out, so we could flush the stools, carry water in to pour in them so we could get the stink out of here. This was what? Four days later? Yes, and then we got the sump pump going over across with it to pump the water out. H: What a relief! W: To pump the water out of the well house so that we could get the .. pump dried out so we could pump water up to the old storage tank. At least we'd have 24 something to clean with and to use the stools. So we got that before the Mennonites got in and began. And the water would run out as fast, almost as fast as we'd pump it up, because . OW: We had hooked up a system of extension cords wired,

w~ Yes, we couldn't turn on any power over there, so we ran extension cords from the third floor over.across the street so we could run it when we finally got the power in here, and, well, then anyway we had something so that the Mennonites could come in and stay. And we had electricity, and you know, it was a mess in here, but a 11 they cared about was having a bed to sleep on, because some of them were older people. You know, and M: I've heard good things about them. W: Oh, they were the first ones that came in with a shovel in their hand and a broom and buckets, see, everybody else that came in was, was an authority and never did anything, while these peale came in and did things. They'd really do. See, they just came in and worked, and they cleaned our garage, and they cleaned the cabin, and they'd just start shoveling, just start shoveling, and they're still doing it. They've been in for what? Two weeks now, and just shoveling mud out of people's houses.

H: They'd come to you, and they'd say, 11 What do you want us to do? 11 and you have no inhibitions of asking them to do any work. Because they want to work. M: They'll do the dirty work. H: They don't care what it is. They could care less. It's so neat. W: It's so refreshing. It really is. And they do it right. H: You don't have to stand over them. You don't have to worry about equipment five minutes because they're tired of doing dirty work. They start when sun comes up, and they quit when the sun goes down. And they've got their 25 own food .

DW: They never threw anything out without asking, either, even if it 1ooked like it was completely destroyed. W: They're just neat people. H: Wow, were they neat. M: And they wouldn't preach g.t you. All: No, no. W: No, they're in and out, that's all. It's called MDS [Mennonite Disaster Service], and you know what the group is, and they go to areas a 11 over the country where there is a disaster and help out. All volunteer, they pay their own expenses to get here, everything. Red Cross provided the food for them. And they just moved into the Y Camp in Estes so that they could go down both h.ighways, instead of staying here and having to go clear up around and down. And we housed them. Can't remember any others. DW: The Job Corps. M: The Job Corps. DW: And the National Guard, and you said they were really neat. W: And we haven't seen the J.ob Corps since. They're still up there trying to g,et into the camp, I guess. DW: No, they're up at the camp. W: Well, whatever. I was trying to think of some of the other things that happened those first few days that, well, there would M: How did you get your generator down from the switchbacks? W: Okay, Doris' brother was in Estes on vacation. And he had a trailer house. DW: He had a truck. W: And a pickup truck. So, I don't know how they got messages up. T: The phone worked. / OW; The phone worked then. 26

T: It was the fourth day we got phone [service] in three days. DW: The phone was working because we . H: Called .... W: That's right, because it was laying on the ground, the wire was laying on the ground, and we had a phone here and the Horseshoe, I think. DW: And the post office.

W: They finally got one to the post office. Anyway, vJe called Doris, and she vvas staying in town at the Hanes' house. And we had her arrange for the gen­ erator, and her brother brought it to the top of the switchbacks, and we got up there . . . . OW: Also, we arranged for two freezers. What food was in the freezers, they hadn't been opened. Which you, you got consent to go to the top of the hill. W: The Scout was running, see. H; They had a very permanent road in by the second night, and it was so perm­ anent that it washed out about four times. They kept shoving these culverts in and trying to cover them, and they'd float away. W: So, and then there was landslides of mud that would go clear across the road in this one spot. And we drove up on Sunday. I got out of the car and walked while Ted drove the car because you had to go clear over the edge where it all washed away, and revved the car up to get through it, and it would spin sideways like this to go through it, and here was the drop-off, sidewalk, beside it. But was it Monday, then, that we, no Tuesday, we made the hundred-dollar stew? T: Yes, that's a good story. M: Hundred-dollar stew? H: Hundred-dollar stew. [Laughter.] W: Well, the meat was spoiling. We couldn't get it out of here, and what we 27 had ip the refrigerator in there, we, I just started cutting it up and made this stew and there were steaks, Chateaubriand cuts, that we pay $8.50 a pound for, went into it, they were . . . . DW: Lobster W: No; we didn't put the lobster in it, honey. We cooked the lobster up, you cooked the lobster up in town. H: Three things of cherry tomatoes. W: We had probably ten pounds of mushrooms. We had ten or fifteen dollars worth of chicken breasts, and all these fine steaks that went into it, you know. It was a lovely stew. H: Three gallons of ice cream. W: Yeah, that was stew, yeah, we had the National Guard boys eat one night, oh, the night we fixed the stew. And they had quite a feast. Oh, yeah, they had quite a feast, and they ended up with ... for desert they had fudge nut pie, and cheese pie, and German chocolate pie, and a three-gallon can of ice cream that had never been opened, of course, it was just like a foamy milkshake inside, you know, we thought we'd better do something with it. H: Ten cans of olives, three pounds of cottage cheese. W: Well, we had to do something with the stuff, you know, and so we just put it out for the boys to eat, plus the hundred-dollar stew. Probably a hun­ dred dollars worth of meat in the thing. Dumped it in, cooked it. M: Somewhere along the line there's going to be sightseers come in. W: We had them one day, they took the barricade off on Wednesday, I think it was. 0: Day before yesterday.

W: Yes, it was Wednesday, it was, and there were a lot of cars came down and there were so many complaints from the road crew because they were inter- 28 fering with their work that they put it back on again. And we're hoping to keep it on until at least we can get all of the dead bodies out of here that they're going to find. See, they haven't got all the trash out yet or all the cars out, and this is where they're finding them.

OW: At least until they get the road in because it was in for .. W: Yes, right, until they can at least get the road up to where they can drive through without interfering with the road crews. Course, we're hoping by the time we get ready to open, that they'll let them come as far as Glen Haven. M: You have t<> get back in business. W: Right, we need to get back down to business. Because so far we have no indication we're going to get any help at all in any way, so .... H: Well, that raises another point. I've been told, I've read in the Denver Post earlier, that there just isn't flood insurance. W: No. Well, there was. Okay, two years ago the government set up a program that they would subsidize the insurance companies. No one told us, see, our insurance people didn't let us know that it was available. Whether or

not we would have bought it, I don't know. It would have cost probably

us about $600 a year. Well, it would have paid for all this, but still, we had never had a flood in here; it just doesn't flood in the mountains, because the water runs away so fast. Even the year that we had the heavy spring rains and the heavy runoff it never flooded in here. The river was really charging through, but it was going away. So I don't know whether we'd have bought flood insurance or not. I don't know, because you just don't think of flooding in the moun­ tains. ' This is such a unique thing of this, well, how many, eighteen or twenty inches of rain fell in this area. This is an unofficial rain gauge thing, 29 that Clarence Nold had up the, just up the road here a little bit. And all at once. DW: And a mile and a half from here, at girls' Cheley Camp, they had an inch and a half. M: How do you recover from this? You don't have flood insurance. You lost

your food inventory. Yo~'ve got all this cleaning up to do. You're in 3 long range stew, the whole bit. What kind of loss is this? Can you come back from this whole thing? W: Well, there's nothing else we can do. So we've applied for federal re­ lief, you know, although we haven't heard anything from them. And we have

an application in for an SBA loan, I don't know if we'll hear from them or not, and we can't wait around for it. So we're going ahead. And we feel that if we can get open, then we can probably pay the bills. But if we don't get open, we won't be able to pay the bills, and

we've still got bills, anyway, I mean the insurance still goes on, the taxes still goes on, everything keeps going, and winter's coming, we've got to do something. And so, there was no other choice for us except dig in and get open again, it's all we can do. M: And get that road through, so that people can come.

W: This is all we can do. At first we thought, 11 Well, we'll have to wait and

see what kind of aid we can get, 11 well, we can't wait around for that, for heaven sakes. OW: We figure we have $20,000 of damage. W: We've gone into debt before, twenty, twenty-five [dollars],probably, some- where along in there, plus

M: But you can 1 t recover on flood insurance there.

W: No. Plus, of course August is our profit month. June and July, you pay 30 all the opening bills, you know, and you get caught up on the inventory, and August is usually the month you get your profit from.

M: That 1 S where you make your break-even and start making it. W: Right, right. And this has always worked for us, and it was enough for us to live on the rest of the winter then. And, of course, we lost that. And we

don 1 t know what future losses we 1 ll have because of the flood. We don 1 t

know what it 1 s going to do to the economy in Estes. for example. I guess

that in Rapid City it took them about three years to get people to come back again after their flood up there. Where they really came back to where it was a normal season again for them. Well, Estes started two days after the flood to let people know that Estes Park was still there. M: Does that make sense to you?

W: Promotion. Yes, I think it does, because they knew the psychology of a tragedy like this, and how people might stay away and cancel their reser­ vations for Estes. Well, the park [Rocky Mountain] wasn't hurt, and Estes

Park wasn 1 t hurt, so there was no reason people couldn 1 t come up as soon

as they got a road up there for them. And of course, evel~yone now is con­ cerned about getting 34 back in because, well, that means life for Loveland as well as us up here. M: Thirty-four is important to you, too? W: Yes, oh sure it is. OW: So many of our dinner guests, besides the tourists, are Loveland, Fort Collins, and Greeley. H: Right.

W: And that's the short way up. You know, otherwise, they 1 ve got to go clear around through Boulder.

M: Okay, we 1 vetalked about some of the recovery problems and, let me ask you, 31 in disasters there's usually a question about looting. So, was there any problem with looting here? W: We did . no, that, I mean, we don't know what people walked out of here with. But there was word of looting, and they saw backpackers coming in with

empty backpacks and "going out with full ones, and well, I don 1 t know what they were looting, whethe-r they were picking up stuff along the river, or

whether they were getting into people 1 s houses or not, but that 1 s when there were sheriffs from three counties suddenly showed up here, and you know, some

more authority that came in, and I don 1 t know whether it stopped anything or

not, but it showed them that they were r::~ot going to allow it, anyway, and this is when the security got real tight at the top of the hill.

They couldn 1 t keep people from going around and coming down through the woods, but just them being here, it kept people from doing too much of that

sort of thing. This is why I didn't want to leave here. In the beginning, because of what may have happened to our place since it was standing, and

there's no way you can completely lock the place up, in that there 1 s always a window or something where people had access to unless you simply boarded

the whole thing; well, then they'd just tear the boards ·off, if they wanted to get in.

M: You 1re optimistic that Glen Haven will rebui 1d, recover. W: Oh, yes, yes. They already have plans to bring down some kind of wild grass seeding to seed back along the river, and it has wildflowers mixed in with it

and, at least get it green by next year and sort of the people down here are worrying about the trees that were torn out, and then the big backhoes are tearing through them, you know, along the riverbank, because you know, they were just beautiful along here. Well, the roots are still there. They're going to come back. And we 32 feel the same way about Glen Haven. The roots are too deep here, if I can make an analogy, and maybe the tops cut off, but it's going to grow back up again. It's been here too long for people to abandon it, that's all. The only thing that may happen is that the county government or state govern­ meht may prevent people from building right on the riverbank again. I don't know ... what they're g_onna do there. One day it's up, and one day it's down, so we don't, this is kind of confusing to people, not knowing what their future is.going to be. M: Okay, I've come to the end of the questions I have for you. Is there any comment, or anything else you want to make part of this tape? W: I don't think so, other than I hope, we figured out that this is a 1,000- year flood. I'll be 1,050 when it happens again. And if I'm still living, it'll be exciting. I'll watch for it. M: Good. Well, thank you for your time. W: You're welcome. Draft materials not scanned

See originals in folder

Water Resources Archive Colorado State University Libraries