Flood Recovery in Lyons, CO

As it has happened quite often with this blog, it went on a small six month hiatus, one that can be credited to a combination of a busy schedule, lack of internet connection, and mostly procrastination. My sincere apologies.

So, picking up right where I left off, my last entry summarized a whirlwind of events in the two short weeks of Corps Member Training Institute. The day after induction, most teams departed for their first round projects, with their destinations ranging from south Texas to Arizona to Arkansas, and many in between. Since my team was selected to be local first round, we had a few days off before beginning our project, a time that we used very wisely: 

Sun 2 after completing the Manitou Springs Incline, 1 mile of stairs

A few days later, we were on our way to Boulder, Colorado. Upon arrival, we settled into our beautiful home for the next five weeks, better known as the AmeriMansion:

Our home at the foothills in Boulder, Colorado

Enjoying one of the many snow days

We shared our six bedroom home among twenty people, living with a team from the Water Unit that was working with Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks. All in all we got extremely lucky with our housing - we were living across the road from the foothills, with beautiful trails within walking distance, yet we were still within minutes of downtown Boulder, a place I briefly visited (and fell in love with) on my cross-country road trip two summers ago.

Located at the base of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, Boulder is a very popular tourist destination. Known as a hippie haven, the city has been voted as one of the happiest places to live in the United States, boasting an array of outdoor recreation, healthy lifestyles, delicacies, arts, music, and everything in between.

For a vegan foodie, the food selection was a dream come true; for a yogi, an abundance of yoga studios (if you have never tried hot yoga, please do!) and the Shambhala Meditation Center offered much needed meditation escapes; for a reader, the Boulder Public Library, World of Books and Trident Booksellers were my sanctuaries, where I spent most of my free time; for a lover of the great outdoors, the beautiful trails surrounding Boulder and the Rocky Mountain National Park were pure joy; lastly, the city offered an abundance of breweries, a winery, and a few fun bars that provided dancing, karaoke, and even arcade games that pleased my inner-nerd!

A trail above Boulder, Colorado

Rocky Mountain National Park

For six weeks, my team and I worked with the City of Lyons assisting in flood recovery. Our tasks varied on a day to day basis, but they included mucking and gutting flooded homes (everything from ripping out dry wall to sledge hammering tile in bathrooms, from taking out tile floors to demolishing entire rooms), helping residents move their belongings out of destroyed homes into storage (we even helped a wine business owner, whose winery was located on the creek in the mountains, move dozens of boxes of wine from his flooded garage... yes, he did invite us for a tasting), dirt removal (it is exactly what it sounds like - you take a shovel, and you move dirt, avoiding the patches that were drenched in sewage water due to unpleasant odor), debris removal, and preparing homes for mold remediation treatments.

An article about our work in Lyons in their local paper, The Recorder

This home was lifted off of its foundation by the flood water

Removing dirt which covered this property during the flood

Mucking and gutting a church in Lyons, Colorado

Helping out in Lyons was my second disaster deployment, the first being in Moore, Oklahoma, following the tornadoes last spring. Unsurprisingly, both brought up very similar emotions. Emotionally challenging and draining, both experiences come with a silver lining - a shift in perspective that can only be experienced after talking to a person that has lost all of their material possessions, a person in economic distress, yet a person with gratitude and joy simply because they're alive.

 

I recall a conversation with a man who lived on the creek whose guest house was washed away while his daughter and her boyfriend were sleeping in it. A rescue mission followed and thankfully nobody was hurt. Having lost his entire home, having had his entire property destroyed, having had his family almost killed in the flood water, all this man kept saying was how excited he is to rebuild, and how lucky he is to have my team there to help.

 

We spend so much of our time worrying about the small things and chasing after the wrong things, attempting to fill the gap in our lives with material goods when in reality, who we are what is left once all of that is taken away.



I could not have asked for a better team