Electric Fishwrap

Survivors remember all signs of humanity scoured away

This story is part of a three-part series. View the original online content for this story at the Reporter-Herald Web site. Click on “View an interactive graphic” under the headline.

By Kate Martin

Reporter-Herald Staff Writer

Rain fell in fat drops from the dark clouds that shrouded the Big Thompson Canyon.

They quickly quenched the parched earth, but soon they washed the thin mountain soil down gullies. The water unleashed rocks and boulders, which tumbled down the sides of the canyon.

Soon, the storm-swelled river washed away land, homes and the road. It also washed away 145 lives.

Mike Fink remembers the Big Thompson flood every time he drives up the canyon. His eyes take a distant cast as he remembers the night he and 25 others spent 16 hours huddled under a rock ledge above the raging river.

He picks out the spot immediately, near U.S. 34’s mile marker 73.

“It seemed like a pretty easy climb,” Fink says. “I’m amazed, now that I look at it, that we were ever able to make it up.”

Saturday, July 31, 1976, dawned humid. As the sun climbed so did the day’s temperature. Fink, his then-wife Marilyn, his niece, Cyndi Scott, and friends Bob and Lois Kelsey piled into his 1973 Chevy Vega and headed up the canyon for a planned evening in Estes Park.

Fink, then 23, said he saw the thunderstorm before they entered the canyon. The storm towered 60,000 feet into the air. Fink, a transplant from Indiana, said he’s never since seen such dark, thick clouds. They entered the canyon at 5 p.m.

Raindrops pelted the car before they reached Drake.

“The rain was harder than I’d ever seen it rain before or since,” Fink said. “The windshield wipers couldn’t keep up.”

About a mile past Waltonia, the storm unleashed a deluge. Large boulders rolled onto the highway and blocked traffic. Fink could go no further.

He turned his Vega and followed about 10 other cars down the canyon. A half mile later, they ran into a gully washer at True Gulch that they dared not cross.

“We were watching the river,” Fink said. “We thought, ‘Wow, this could maybe be a flood.’”

People left their cars and watched the raging river. Just about everyone wore shorts and T-shirts. They grabbed floor mats and tarps to shield themselves from the warm rain.

“When the water was 1 foot below the road, we decided to get out,” Fink said. “We wanted to be prepared just in case.”

Finally, someone in the group suggested they climb the hillside. All of them took shelter between two vertical slabs of rock, about 20 feet above the road.

Fifteen minutes later, the river swept their cars away.

They saw mobile homes and campers float past. The smell of propane permeated the air. Cars floated by; the headlamps pointed up as they bobbed in the river’s flow.

“We were trying not to get scared,” Fink said. “We guessed there had to be people in the cars and the motor homes.”

The roar of the river was so loud, they had to shout to be heard. Lightning struck continuously. It was almost like daylight in the canyon, Fink said.

Rain flowed in rivulets down their faces and backs, soaking them. Fink said he occasionally felt deep vibrations in the earth.

Sometime that night, Fink noticed the road was gone.

“There was no hint of a road anywhere,” Fink said. “It was kind of cool, pristine. All signs of man had been erased.”

With every grain of silt, every pebble and log the water swept away, the flood gained force.

The highway was mostly gone between Estes Park and the mouth of the canyon. Only small islands of road on the inside curves of the river remained.

The river’s flow was so fast, 31,200 cubic feet per second, it would have filled an Olympic-sized swimming pool every 2.83 seconds. It whirled boulders through The Narrows and gouged out the river’s bottom by 10 feet through solid schist and granite.

Somehow a small house or camper survived the trip through The Narrows and crashed into a support for the siphon that carries water to Horsetooth Reservoir. The water carried it about a quarter mile downriver.

The floodwaters spread out and slowed. The river dropped boulders, cars, silt, propane tanks, houses, campers and trees throughout Loveland.

Dave Viegut, then 19, sat on the ridge by the Devil’s Backbone to watch the Big Thompson River near midnight Saturday, July 31.

His father, Darrell Viegut, a reserve officer with the Loveland Police Department, handed him a spotlight to search the water’s surface for cars, floating debris and bodies. The entire valley was inundated with water. Glade Road and U.S. 34 were underwater, a nearby mobile home park, gone.

After midnight, officials found the first victim.

Viegut left the hillside and went to work for Hunter Funeral Home, where he apprenticed.

At dawn, Fink understood why he felt vibrations in the earth throughout the night. Boulders as big as bulldozers rested in the river’s bed where the road used to be. The road was gone in both directions as far as they could see.

Fink said almost everyone was shivering and in the first stages of hypothermia. They broke into a small cabin, which no longer stands, to get blankets and search for food. Later that morning, the group flagged down a rescue helicopter with sheets from the cabin.

Women, children and the elderly were evacuated first. Fink and the other men in the party were airlifted to a small stretch of U.S. 34 that remained and later to Drake. Fink rode with a few others on a four-wheel-drive trail near Storm Mountain. He was dropped off at Loveland High School, a staging area for victims and their families, to reunite with his terrified wife and niece.

“They kept saying they heard different stories of what happened to us,” Fink said. “They heard there was another flood coming.”

By dawn, residents realized the full power of the flood.

Water had swept through Loveland, blocking U.S. 287 for a few days. The old fairgrounds were completely underwater, as was Centennial Park and Barnes Park. Roads in Weld County were washed out. Flood victims were found near Interstate 25.

President Gerald Ford declared Larimer County a disaster area.

Loveland’s heart rose with the need. Thousands of people wanted to help. The National Guard, police officers, firefighters, helicopter pilots, search and rescue personnel and their dogs, reporters and sightseers descended upon Loveland.

Funeral home workers from surrounding communities came to Loveland to help grieving families put their loved ones to rest. Many morticians worked from 8 a.m. to 4 a.m. the following day, Viegut said. They slept at the funeral home and worked in the same clothes day after day.

“I thought I was a big, strong, tough kid,” Viegut said, emotion filling his voice. “About three weeks into it, we had a body come in and it was a little 3-year-old boy, and I just lost it.”

Searchers found the last body nearly two months after the flood. In all, 145 people lost their lives; six of those victims never were found.

“Our little town of Sweetheart City woke up,” Viegut said.

“We are not immune to anything.”

The day after the flood, Jim and Gary Disney volunteered for the recovery effort.

They were to retrieve personal items, such as wallets and purses, and keep an eye out for victims.

The brothers had climbed the walls of the Big Thompson Canyon as boys. Jim Disney, later a Larimer County commissioner, saw marked changes in the canyon the morning after the flood.

“The force in The Narrows had to be awesome,” Disney said. “It’s a pretty good testament to the power of the flood.”

Changes upstream surprised Disney as well. At the confluence of the north and south forks of the Big Thompson River, two hotels were obliterated.

“They were not only not there, there was no evidence they had ever been there,” Disney said.

Both Viegut and Fink said the flood changed their lives.

Viegut said the flood inspired him to remain in the funeral business.

“It made me stronger in my faith, in my understanding of what the need is in people,” he said.

Fink was inspired to join the Larimer County Search and Rescue team in 1980. He serves as the group’s public information officer.

Today, Fink realizes the true danger he and his friends were in.

“I’m grateful that, for whatever reason, we made a lot of good decisions that night,” he said.

He said people should pay attention to the weather if they plan a trip up any of Colorado’s mountain canyons. Don’t hesitate to abandon your car, he said:

“If you have the slightest inclination there’s going to be a flood, you should climb to higher ground.”

Originally published July 29, 2006.