Jessica Shawcroft
The Paw Print
What is up with all this rain! All summer we needed the moisture and now, when growing season is mostly done and we’re settling in for the winter, we get a bunch of storms that drop an impressive amount of rain on our cities and towns! After all the fires this past summer season, we need the rain and it’s important we’re getting it. However we have a lot of cities reporting a state of emergency because of the amount of rain.
The first big storm we had washed out Manitou Springs, close to Colorado Springs. The town had a few people die and a lot of buildings and cars ruined. This past weekend the floods caused a lot of problems for people in several cities in Colorado. Hundreds of people were airlifted out of flooded towns in Colorado on Friday. The death toll for the recent floods was raised to four but some people are still reported missing. Many people have been stuck in the floods and their power lost. The National Guard was called in to help evacuate people; they worked until it was too dark or dangerous to continue. People had to leave everything they owned and the towns they loved because of the rains. Crews worked around the clock to rescue the stranded people from the cities. People have been seen using surfboards, boats, motorboats, and canoes to get out of their stranded situations. Unfortunately people have been found dead, stuck in their cars, and being swept away from the water.
As the water ruins building foundations, the buildings collapse and people have been found dead inside from that too. The questions many people have is how many homes have been lost, how many lives we’ve lost, how many people are stranded and just how much damage the floods have done. Many smaller towns have been isolated because of mud-slides, rock-slides, or debris. In some cases, the roads have been completely washed away. The National Guard has been dropping supplies and evacuating people; more than 2300 people have been evacuated. Some students, on a field trip, ended up stranded. Many people were lucky to get out and many are still missing.
I’m brought back to the fires this past summer and the issues we had with evacuating everyone from surrounding towns. Supplies were dropped off for many people and many still struggled. We were lucky with how we ended up; we are still lucky with the water we’ve had. Compared to other towns and cities, we aren’t hurting too bad. It’s interesting how back when we had the different fires going on, the other half of the country was flooding. Now that we are having a lot of floods, the other half of the country is struggling with fires. Many believe the end of the world is marked with signs such as these. Interesting huh? In either case, Colorado has had a lot of major, natural disasters happening and it’s hard to keep up with.
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