GREELEY — Dezarae Wolf saved from the money she earns as a rural mail carrier for four years and in November, she was finally able to buy a simple downtown Greeley house for her and her son, Logan.
When she went to the basement Wednesday morning to feed her dog, she found herself neck-deep in water.
Wolf, 28, sent Logan, now 9, to the Boys and Girls Club and scrapped her canned goods, dried out her records and mourned her treasured antique furniture, including her favorite, a 1950s-era sofa.
“I’m devastated,” Wolf said.
One person was killed and another was seriously injured during the storm that ripped through Greeley late Tuesday night, city officials said Wednesday. During the heaviest period of hail and rain, crews from Greeley, Platte Valley, Evans and Windsor rescued 10 people. Some were pulled from stranded cars, others had to be helped from their flooded basement apartments through windows, a spokeswoman said. Most of the rescues took place in east Greeley.
Some downtown business owners reported significant damage. A few east Greeley neighborhoods were flooded as their roads turned into rivers.
Sixteenth Street, a major east-west route through Greeley, was closed in both directions from U.S. 85 to Sixth Avenue (the block that seemed to take the worst damage) in downtown Greeley.
City crews worked through the night and Wednesday morning to clear streets of piles of hail and shredded tree branches and closed a some city buildings, including the former senior center, now called the Active Adult Center, and opened a temporary shelter at the Family FunPlex, which was occupied by four people and two dogs as of Wednesday afternoon. Residents can report damage here and keep up to date on the storm and road closures here.
Wolf knew the storm was memorable, but as she watched the constant lightning flash through the sky like a strobe light and the hail pile up, she wasn’t too worried and fell asleep as the thunder died to a whisper. Wednesday morning, after she discovered her basement resembled a swimming pool, she went outside to find her yard full of solid chunks of hail the size of small boulders.
She thinks a wall of water crashed through her back yard and into her block and basement overnight. It’s possible that the heavy hail, enough for many residents to report that they shoveled it like snow to allow water to run from their yards, acted as a dam until it broke, sending the water rushing toward her home and other houses near the intersection of 16th Street and Sixth Avenue.
Wolf said she used to watch flash floods as a kid living in Fort Lupton next to the South Platte River, and her family’s barn flooded every year. This was worse, she said.
In the next block over, Sarah Vasquez, 51, swept mud and branches from her walk Wednesday afternoon. The storm the night before, she said as she swept, kept her and husband under a gas station canopy for an hour as they returned from a softball game. They barely made it back home as the water on her block nearly covered her tires. This morning they found their basement flooded.
“Thank God it was just that,” Vasquez said.
As I was sweeping water out of the store, I just kept saying, ‘It’s OK, it’s OK, it’s OK.’ But I didn’t know if it was OK.
— Marie Flores, downtown Greeley business owner
Some basement renters bore the brunt of the storm a few blocks away. David Bernot, a graduate student at the University of Northern Colorado, found water nearly up to his bed when he returned home to his basement apartment. The trip home took a while: At one point, he dove in the back seat because the hail was so bad he thought his windshield would shatter. He decided to spend the night at his parents’ Greeley home.
Wednesday morning he was packing for an unexpected move. The floors in his apartment are ruined and he isn’t sure it’s safe to live there now. But his Pokemon collection and saxophones were safe. Some sheet music was drenched.
“I haven’t started plugging in some electronics,” Bernot said, “to see if they still work.”
Businesses mostly just got wet, but some in the heart of downtown were flooded. Marie Flores said at one point a river was rushing through her store. Her husband, Miguel, got drenched and cold trying to shovel piles of hail outside to keep the water moving.
“As I was sweeping water out of the store, I just kept saying, ‘It’s OK, it’s OK, it’s OK,’” Marie said. “But I didn’t know if it was OK.”
The two were nearly done renovating their makeup store, called Girl Talk, into a dessert shop that will sell root beer floats, ice cream and other sweets. It will be called Sweet Talk Shoppe. Her neighbors, including Mom’s Popcorn and The Strange and Unusual, an oddities store, also had significant flooding and were closed for the day.
The Floreses now aren’t sure when the new store will open. Marie said it may take a few weeks to recover. Still, she has high hopes for their new concept.
“Food is always good,” Marie said. “When you’re happy, you eat, and when you’re sad, you eat too.”
She paused and sighed.
“We should go eat now,” she said.