Tag Archives: Colorado Resiliency Office

Decade of Recovery and Resilience in Colorado

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Victoria Simonsen discussing a map of the town’s flood damage with visitor, 2014

Ten years ago this month, Colorado faced a crisis. Following previous years of drought and wildfires, Rocky Mountain monsoon rains dumped a year’s worth of precipitation on the Front Range in a single day. Water poured down mountainsides that were sometimes so parched and scorched from previous high heat and fires that they could not absorb the rainfall, which then carried mud and debris downhill through the towns in its path. One of those towns was Lyons, which we visited on July 13 to interview Town Administrator Victoria Simonsen, who has remained on the job through thick and thin, helping to guide a remarkable recovery. But she also helped arrange for us to interview homeowner Priscilla Cohan, who is also a local artist, and Neil Sullivan, owner of the St. Vrain Market local grocery store. He has also served on the town’s planning commission, and his wife served two terms as mayor during the recovery.

Click here to watch the blog video recorded in Lyons.

I had previously visited Lyons twice in the early years after the flood, discussing some of the situation in an early blog post here. During the same time, a Community Planning Assistance Team (CPAT) from the American Planning Association spent several days visiting Lyons and producing a report with its own recommendations for moving forward. Lyons received other outside help too, from agencies like the Federal Emergency Management Agency, of course, but also from entities like the planning school at the University of Colorado at Denver.

Aerial view of damage to bridge over St. Vrain River in September 2013

Now, the town is moving forward this month with a commemoration of that infamous flood that divided this Rocky Mountain hillside community into six islands divided by flood waters, compounding the difficulties of search and rescue until the flood waters receded. Why did we go there now? We wanted to capture this story and learn how it fit into a larger story of the State of Colorado building capacity for local governments to develop resilience in the face of cascading disasters like drought, wildfires, landslides, and flooding. We will integrate that story into the final film product for Planning to Turn the Tide, made possible by the assistance of people like Simonsen and numerous other volunteers from the Colorado APA Chapter and the Colorado planning community.

If you wish to support this endeavor, please use the QR code below or link here.

Jim Schwab

Filming at the Omni

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As previous installments of our blog video series have indicated, the production team for Planning to Turn the Tide spent a great deal of time in June and July first in Florida, then on a two-week road trip to Colorado and Iowa from Chicago to capture additional content.

Click here to see the short video taped at the Omni Interlocken Hotel and Resort in Broomfield, Colorado.

From July 9-12, we attended and filmed at the Natural Hazards Workshop, held at the Omni, completing eleven interviews with leading planners and hazards experts:

This range of expertise became available to us largely because of the enthusiastic support of the Natural Hazards Center, part of the University of Colorado, and its executive director, Lori Peek, who arranged meeting room space where we could set up equipment, and to which we could direct those willing to be interviewed for the film. In addition, I was able to scout plenary and breakout sessions for promising speakers, some of whom are on the list above, to supplement those I contacted ahead of time.

Natural Hazards Workshop Barbecue on closing night, University of Colorado Stadium (Folsom Field), July 2013

It may be obvious, at least to those experienced in such productions, that a one-hour documentary can use only a small fraction of the recordings we have gathered to date, but the beauty lies in our ability to identify those segments that will best help tell the larger story and illuminate the issues involved in planning for resilient communities in the face of natural disasters and climate change. Each of these highly trained and knowledgeable individuals gave us new perspectives and ideas to think about as we develop our film. The end product will be richer for it. But it is also likely that we will find other ways to use some of the material that does not make it into the initial film efforts, in part because the APA Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Planning Division, which is sponsoring and supporting the project, has other avenues for offering public and professional education on hazards.

And who is to say that, as time goes on, and with additional resources, this is our one and only film? If you wish to support our efforts, please use the QR code below to make a secure donation.

Jim Schwab