Record-breaking rains brought severe flooding to Fort Collins overnight, sending a wall of water roaring through one neighborhood and smashing houses and mobile homes. At least five people died and dozens were missing.
Television footage showed a man clinging to a pole next to a mobile home as a rescuer tried unsuccessfully to reach him. The rescuer ended up seeking refuge on a light pole. Both were later saved.John Peterson, a resident of the mobile home park, said, "Some of them (trailers) were nothing left, just nothing left of them. There were cars which have been submerged under water, they're all totaled now. The water was waist-deep."
One unidentified man told KUSA he spent an hour in a tree waiting for help and heard people screaming in a mobile home as it was carried away in the floodwaters of Spring Creek.
Steady drizzle continued Tuesday as rescue crews looked for survivors and possible bodies in the raging creek.
Water from 10 to 20 feet high roared through the neighborhood near the Colorado State University campus, said police Lt. Brad Hurst.
"It's possible there are injured people who need rescue. It's possible there are (more) people who have died," said Hurst.
Seven people were treated at Poudre Valley Hospital, five with hypothermia from exposure to the chilly water and two others with serious lacerations caused by blown-out windows.
Gov. Roy Romer was flying back from the governors conference in Las Vegas to visit the scene.
The flash flood hit just days before the anniversary of the Big Thompson River flood 20 miles to the southeast of here. More than 10 inches of rain fell July 31, 1976, when a storm sat over the area for hours much like one did Monday night at Fort Collins. The death toll there rose to 148.
The storm dumped more than 8 inches of rain in less than five hours. Two or 3 inches had fallen earlier in the day.
City Manager John Fishbach said damage would total in the millions of dollars and declared a local emergency in the city of 88,000 people 60 miles north of Denver.
"The water rose to my chest. That's how high it was," said Suzanne Faustino-Camacho. She and her three children were inside their mobile home as the rain fell and the puddles became streams.
They tried to escape by jumping into the back of a pickup truck with 15 other people. When it stalled, the family leaped from the truck and made it to a Red Cross shelter.