When the fire raged above them on the mountain, the evacuated residents of Ponderosa Village hoped for rain. They wished for anything to help the firefighters get control of the blaze so it wouldn’t burn down the hill and destroy their homes.

They watched the billowing, cauliflower-shaped pyrocumulus clouds rise as the fire constructed its own weather. They watched the glow of the embers on the hillsides above their homes, the trees exploding with sparks and the airplanes dropping fire retardant. They returned, relieved that they survived.

Now, they watch the weather forecast with trepidation. A rumble of thunder causes panic. The mountain they wished it would rain on before now threatens to slide into their homes — and some of them are still trying to clean up the mess that left their homes uninhabitable.

Flooding from rain on the Gold Mountain Fire’s burn scar has rushed through the north side of the neighborhood three times since July 25. The first time some folks slept through it, the flooding was so minor. The second time, it got their attention. And the third time, on July 29, it was scary.

The rains pushed charred, fallen trees down the mountain, crashing them into the houses fronting Cutler Creek along Blue Tip Drive. The homes were stranded, as the deluge of water sought its easiest path, breaching the creek bed and gushing down the street. The homes on the island bore the brunt of the flood’s force, as mud and debris filled basements and first floors with feethigh muck.

Even a week later, residents continued to pull out their mud-encrusted belongings, trying to determine what they could salvage and piling their things outside to dry.

An assessment team concluded at least three of those homes aren’t currently safe to live in, due to structural damage, and Ouray County “red-tagged” them.

Farther down the hill, by the highway, the powerful waters shoved two shipping containers the length of a football field. Debris washed across the highway, flooding fields on the west side of the road and clogging ditches and irrigation headgates. One homeowner dredged a mangled bicycle from the ditch with the muck. The culvert under the bridge filled with logs and other debris, forcing the water to go up and around the blockage.

Plans to construct flood barriers to direct the floodwaters the next time it rains will likely come together too late for the next storm. Ouray County is working quickly to hire an engineering firm to design those barriers, but construction isn’t estimated to be complete for at least the next 30 to 60 days.

The National Weather Service’s forecast shows showers are likely for the burn scar next week, starting on Monday. There are more than 20 homes in Ponderosa Village and the area around Cutler Creek that may be in the path of the next flood, and other properties in drainages that also may have debris flooding including along Dexter Creek and Crooked Tree Gulch.

‘It’s too late’

All afternoon, Eric Foster had an anxious feeling every time he looked at the sky.

Foster’s home in Ponderosa Village had already flooded once last week after an inch of rain fell over the burned-over Cutler Creek area on July 26. Now, three days later, he was doing survey work in Mountain Village while his wife and three kids were at home. And clouds were building up.

“I just felt eerie,” he said. “Every time the clouds pop up there, I’ve been nervous about it.”

Late in the day on July 29, Foster got a call from a friend warning his house was under another flash flood warning. Throwing his gear in his truck, he raced down the mountain and frantically called his family. Finally, Foster reached his wife, Alicia, who was trapped with the kids – Weston, age 11, and twins Ellie and Daisy, age 4 – on the third floor of the house. Flood waters raged on all sides.

“I told her to just stay in the home. It’s too late,” he said.

Around the same time, Weston calmly raced between windows, recording a video of the waters engulfing their home’s lower level.

As tons of debris, ash and mud pour down the hillside, Alicia Foster can be heard saying, “I should have left.”

One of his sisters cries in the background and asks, “Can you get me my angel necklace? My angel necklace? It’s gonna be OK downstairs?”

“Ohmigosh,” Weston said in the video, exclaiming at the rush of chocolate milk-colored water raging against their house. “It’s getting worse.”

Foster reached the area by the KOA campground west of U.S. Highway 550 and sprinted uphill to reach them during a lull in the flood.

“We each grabbed one kid, and we just looked uphill, waiting for the right moment, and timed it just right, and got out and got up to higher ground,” he recalled.

Eric Foster stands for a portrait by his home, damaged by the flood and debris last week. Photo by Chart Riggall – Ouray County Plaindealer

All told, at least six properties were damaged and at least 17 people were rescued from flooding and debris flows in the Cutler and Dexter Creek areas between Ridgway and Ouray after heavy rain fell on the Gold Mountain burn scar.

During a July 30 Ouray County commissioners’ emergency meeting, Undersheriff Tammy Stroup said most people in the Ponderosa Village area stayed behind, but the 17 people who were rescued from two homes were visitors who rented vacation rentals.

“They were not familiar with the area or what to expect,” she said.

County Emergency Manager Glenn Boyd said firefighters and emergency medical personnel helped those 17 people out of their homes. He said they were stuck because debris was flowing through the first floor.

The good news, Boyd said, is nobody was injured. County Attorney Leo Caselli said authorities contacted the vacation rental company and asked it to cease reservations in the flooded area. U.S. Highway 550 was closed between Ridgway and Ouray for several hours the night of July 29, while a series of mudslides on Red Mountain Pass kept U.S. 550 closed until the morning of July 31.

County Attorney Antonio Mendez said this week that while crews have been working to repair Blue Tip Drive and other roads, flood mitigation efforts — which could receive nearly $3 million in federal funding support — remain in the engineering phase.

“We’re both moving as fast as we can, and not fast enough,” he said.

County leaders met with Ponderosa Village residents during a homeowners’ association meeting Tuesday night, where homeowners asked questions about next steps following the July 29 flood. Boyd told the Plaindealer they hope to have flood mitigation materials such as sand bags, concrete blocks and debris fences in place in 30 to 60 days, although he said it will likely be closer to 60.

Boyd said residents asked if they could do their own work to protect themselves and their properties from another potential flood. They were told they could, as long as they don’t build any structures.

Getting by with help from friends

The Grogans saw the flood happening from afar through a camera monitoring their house. They were still at their primary home in Texas when it happened and spent the 14-hour drive wondering what they would find when they arrived.

While they were still on the road, helpers from their congregation at Ridgway Community Church showed up with elbow grease to muck out the mess as much as they could.

One by one they showed up with buckets and shovels. “I just couldn’t stand for you to see this. I wanted you to at least be able to get to your front door,” one woman told Pat Grogan. When Pat and her husband, Keith, arrived, they found a clear path to their garage and up the steps to their front door.

Someone mucked out the garage with a Skidsteer. Ladies from church brought lunch and they ate together, using the tailgate of a truck as a table.

The Grogans planned to spend more time at their dream home after purchasing it in 2023, but health issues and Keith’s cancer treatment kept them in Dallas. Still, they built a community at church who showed up to help them in the worst of times.

On Tuesday, a hill of soggy carpet volunteers ripped out of the house sat piled on the edge of the driveway. Mud-smeared furniture dotted their front yard, like a haphazard yard sale. Inside their home, the mudstained walls marked the flood lines about three feet up from the floor. Mud splattered their oven range window.

One helper came downstairs, carrying a log that had come through a window. “He said, ‘This is just not normal. This should not be in anyone’s house,'” Grogan said.

“I was a basket case for two days,” she said on Tuesday. “I was just overwhelmed with the love that I felt from these people and the generosity of their time and energy.”

The community support is one good thing to come out of this disaster, Grogan said. She looks forward to a time when the couple can again enjoy sitting on their porch, staring at the mountains.

“That’s our favorite place. Everything just falls away,” she said.

Next door, Megan Kienapfel, who lives with her mother and grandmother, was surprised when a group of volunteers from Safer More Affirming Communities and Ouray County Pride showed up to help board up their windows and salvage belongings.

They cut down the tree where the family had spread her grandfather’s ashes and saved it for them. They measured windows for plywood and helped muck out debris. They brought coffee and support.

On Tuesday, Kienapfel met with the excavator her family hired to dig out their driveway and move the boulders that came crashing down into their yard. She covered her ears against the grinding and scraping noises from the backhoe.

It was the new soundtrack to her neighborhood, replacing the wind in the trees and the sound of the birds. But at least she wasn’t hearing rushing water. At the Ponderosa Village HOA meeting Tuesday night, the neighbor’s burbling water feature in the yard reminded her of the sound of the flood.

Megan Kienapfel stands in front of her flooded home on Blue Tip Drive as an excavator works to unearth her family’s driveway. Their home in Ponderosa Village flooded on July 29, when a storm dumped rain on the Gold Mountain Fire burn scar on the mountain above the neighborhood. The burned soil, unable to absorb the rain, slid and caused flooding of Cutler Creek. The flood brought mud and debris down through her home and several others down the hillside to the west with such force that it pushed two shipping containers the length of a football field at the bottom of the hill. The Kienapfels and their neighbors, the Foster family, are accepting donations to assist them with recovery through GoFundMe online. Click here for the Kienapfels’ online donations. Click here for the Fosters’ online donations. Erin McIntyre | Ouray County Plaindealer

Future of neighborhood unclear

Speaking with the Plaindealer on Tuesday, Foster said he’d been working about 20 hours a day to clear mud, logs and boulders from his property, using an excavator he rented to shove the debris into a massive, makeshift levee along Cutler Creek. His backyard, where he was previously building a patio, is now buried under about 8 feet of mud.

Foster, whose family has only lived in the house for about a year, said he took out a flood insurance policy two days after the Gold Mountain Fire began, knowing that downhill floods were likely. But even if he receives a full payout on his policy, he added, he’d still be stuck trying to rebuild on a property that remains at risk of being washed away.

On Tuesday morning, Foster stood in front of his uninhabitable house and made his monthly payment on his Jeep, which he figures is probably totaled. The white Gladiator sat alongside the road, mud from the debris flow caked on above its windows. He parked it in front of the house on the road before the last flood, figuring it would be safer there than closer to the creek. But then the road turned into a raging river and dragged the Jeep downhill.

During an earlier, smaller flood on July 26, Foster said, his rain gauge at the house clocked 1.12 inches of rain in just 45 minutes. During the latest incident, it was only a fraction of that — 0.05 inches. But the flood came from rain that fell up above, rushing down the mountain as the burned soil repelled the water. It happened faster and more intensely than the previous flood.

“The NRCS is calling that a one-year event, one-year rainfall,” he said, referring to the Natural Resources Conservation Service’s probability for the same level of precipitation. “That’s a one-year event. So if there’s a five-year (flood)… I don’t know what the future looks like for the neighborhood. No one really does.”

A five-year flood has a 20% chance of occurring in any given year.

During Tuesday night’s HOA meeting, the neighbors agreed to hire more excavators to try to mitigate flooding from the next storm, knowing the county’s work won’t be completed before it rains again.

‘The power of this water … was extreme’

During last week’s emergency meeting, Boyd said the flood was far more powerful than a regular late-summer monsoon.

“This isn’t your normal runoff that you’re used to,” he said. “The power of this water (July 29) was extreme, extreme to the fact that it moved motor homes and shipping containers.”

He urged the public to head flash flood warnings like the one the National Weather Service issued the afternoon of July 29.

“When we issue that flash flood warning, that means it’s imminent and it’s going to come,” he said.

Boyd said he’s heard some people ask whether the July 29 flash flooding and debris flows will be the only event.

“That’s absolutely not the case,” he said, noting it’s likely the next event will be worse because the flood and mudslides created a path for future debris flows.

This type of flooding has occurred for years after fires in other Western states.

Authorities have urged homeowners to obtain flood insurance covering debris flows, which are not normally covered by homeowners’ insurance policies. Because of the Gold Mountain Fire, any property owner located below the burn scar can obtain flood insurance without the required 30-day waiting period.

It’s not just Ponderosa Village and the area around Cutler Creek that is susceptible to flooding — any drainage below the burn scar is a possible area for debris flooding.

After several consecutive days of hot, dry weather, National Weather Service forecasters are calling for the next chance of rain to arrive in Ouray County on Monday.

A basketball hoop stands sentinel over flood debris and muck piled where the Kienapfel family’s driveway and front yard used to be located. Charred logs, mud and boulders came crashing down during the flooding of Cutler Creek on July 29, when it rained and the creek escaped its banks. Blue Tip Drive turned into a river, leaving the residents caught between the creek and the flooded street. Erin McIntyre | Ouray County Plaindealer