Abstract: Danny Basch is the Facility Manager for Operations at Rocky Mountain National Park.

Interview Transcription

Interviewee: Danny Basch, Facility Manager for Operations, Rocky Mountain National Park Interviewer: Mitchell Schaefer

Location: Rocky Mountain National Park near Estes Park, Colorado Date: July 29, 2014

Transcribed by: Mitchell Schaefer

Abstract: Danny Basch is the Facility Manager for Operations at Rocky Mountain National Park.

In the interview, he describes his background and interest in Rocky Mountain National Park and his education in archaeology. Much of this interview examines his basic day-to-day duties at R.M.N.P. and how the 2013 flood affected his work there. He describes in detail how the flood affected the park both financially and physically. He also recounts how the park employees helped with flood mitigation and recovery following the events of September 2013. Though he does not describe it in great detail, Basch also mentions his work on an incident command team within R.M.N.P.

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MS: I am Mitchell Schaefer, a graduate student and researcher with the Public Lands History Center at Colorado State University working on the 2013 Colorado Flood Oral History Project.

Today, on July 29, 2014, at 1:00 PM, I am at Rocky Mountain National Park near Estes Park, Colorado, interviewing Danny Basch who works as the Facility Manager for Operations for the National Park Service at Rocky Mountain National Park. In September 2013, Mr. Basch worked in that same capacity during the flooding that affected several counties in Colorado. Today’s interview will focus on his role in responding to that crisis.

MS: Could we begin by you giving us a brief background of where you are from and how you ended up in this position?

DB: Sure and thank you very much. As noted I’m the Facility Manager for Operations, so what that means in English is basically running the facility management division on a day-to-day basis.

So all of our operational elements to facility management, so keeping the roads, buildings, utilities, and all of our trails, all of our infrastructure up and running. I’ve been in the park since the early ‘90s. Grew up around the Estes Park Valley here and started working seasonally in high school and worked on trails for a number of summers. Going to college at Fort Lewis in Durango where I eventually got a degree of bachelor of arts in basically archaeology, studied

anthropology, and then continued to work here at the park seasonally as a crew leader. Did that

for another couple four years and basically got on full time permanent as the east side district,

East District Trail Supervisor and did that for almost a decade. And that position basically took

care of all the front country and backcountry trails in the park. So I’m pretty familiar with the

park’s landscape and the east district especially. And was here for the obviously the historic

floods last September which impacted, you know, basically our mission: provide for recreational

experience for our visitors and also conserve and steward the natural resources in the park.

Obviously had a big impact on the roads and visitation and we’ll get into more I’m sure.

MS: Okay. You, kind of getting into the role the National Park, what is, what is, describe what is Rocky Mountain National Park, why it was created, and essentially what is that’s its

responsibilities are, especially you guys as stewards of the area?

DB: Yeah, we were created as part of the early, an early unit and what has become the National Park System. The park was created in 1915, so we’re coming, knocking on the door of our centennial year, which will start off this fall. Park Service was formally authorized in 1916 so we’re again an early park, if I’m getting my dates right in the history of the Parks Service, so it’s been here for quite a while. Obviously a natural draw, the park’s three hundred and fifty miles of trails, we’re about three hundred and fifty acres or so within the park’s boundaries and we were set aside to, as I mentioned, preserve and conserve the natural and historic resources within the park, and one of those key resources being the alpine tundra. About a third of the park’s above tree line and it’s really world class representation of northern Colorado Rocky ecosystems and the climate and the natural features and obviously a great popular tourist destination. Folks from all over the world come here to visit, world class, you know, hiking, biking, skiing, climbing, backpacking, all kinds of really fun stuff to do here. So our mission is to basically facilitate that.

Obviously get people into the park and through the roads and the utilities systems support that mission basically of getting folks out into the resources for recreation and other, other fun stuff.

MS: Okay. What are your responsibilities as the facility manager?

DB: Again, it’s day-to-day operations so all of our roads, our trails, our buildings, our water,

waste water systems, the custodial function that we do around the park, all the trash patrols, the

recycling programs, everything else on the west side of the park, and then all the trails in the park

as well. Basically, all of the, all the built facilities, all the assets are within our divisions, our

responsibilities to make sure that they’re up and running, their performing their function, they’re

being operated properly, so for us it's a lot of, basically we have a seasonal routine. We activate a

lot of water systems, utilities, a lot of housing, a lot of campgrounds that are dormant over the

wintertime. So there’s an activation period in the spring while we’re getting busy, while we’re

getting ramped up for the busy season. Basically, May through September is the, the “main

season,” the tourist season, we’re, we’re at full scale for operation and then come fall there’s a

shutdown or deactivation period where we basically go through and put everything back to bed

or back to offline that’s going to be for the winter time. So many campgrounds, some housing,

employee housing, and etc. We get ready, we operate, then we put it back to bed, and then in the

wintertime obviously we maintain our roads, other buildings, visitor centers, few utilities that

make it through the wintertime, but it’s, it’s, it’s definitely a seasonal sort of activity for us as we

support the mission of the park as we do our thing.

MS: This may play into the, when we discuss more about the floods. When does, when do you start to shut down, I guess, the park in that less people are coming in, less facilities are being used, about what time in September does that occur?

DB: Well, it’s interesting that last three or four or five years our single busiest day of the year have been weekends in September, so kind of a convergence of events. While the weekdays tend to slow down and get a little calmer, when the schools are back in session the weekends are still really busy. So the fall colors, the aspen are turning. We have the elk that are doing their rut, so they’re a big tourist draw, or a popular sightseeing thing…

MS: [Sneeze]

DB: Bless you. And the town of Estes Park has a lot of, a lot of events and activities scheduled in the fall that tend to draw people up to the Valley for like our festivals, and there’s a few other festivals and things that go on in September and into the fall weekends that bring a lot of folks up here for those days. So, it’s about the middle of September we start thinking about it and by the time the winter’s knocking on the door it’s, you know, middle of September, we’re going into deactivations full scale. So we have a number of different seasonal water systems and we start deactivating them about that time, about the middle of September. And so about then too the college folks are here for the summer have gone back to school. Weekdays tend to be a little bit less busy, but then the weekends are still, you know, very active in town, but generally speaking about the first of October the temperatures here are getting cooler around here and we’re starting to shut down things real, on a full time basis.

MS: Does the park remain open throughout the winter or ?

DB: The park does. Yeah, so not as many facilities or satellite areas may be open, and a lot of those are administrative support, so a lot of housing. But like, for example, water at several campgrounds will be closed off like Longs Peak Trailhead for example, we’ll have water there during the summer, but in the wintertime we don’t. So it’s an area that’s still open but we do, you know, activate those, provide those summer services and then not a year round thing.

MS: Okay. What are some major projects that you’ve worked on, other than the flood and issues relating to that? What are some major projects that you’ve worked on while in this position?

DB: Well, we had a number of major projects just completed. It wasn’t so much one of my

particular personal projects, but we had two major federal highway projects just completed right

before the flood. We just completed the Bear Lake Road phase 2, which was the upper half of

Bear Lake Road, the second major road in the park, and then prior, just prior to that we finished

reconstructing Highway 34 Trail Ridge Road over the park’s, you know, it’s over the Continental

Divide and over to the west side of the park. And so in the last four years, you know, multiple

million-dollar road projects, federal highway projects have been completed in the park and that was just before the flood, too. So those were really major, major projects for the park. Kind of got our primary roads infrastructure kind of ready for this second century for the park, you know, pretty literally, so. And they fared the flood very well, they performed as designed, so no real impacts to either roadway during the flooding, fortunately.

MS: That’s good. What is your most rewarding and some of your most challenging parts of your work?

DB: Oh, well. You know, it definitely takes a village for running park. I mean I love parks, and I grew up in ‘em, going to ‘em. And, you know, some of our biggest challenges are providing the daily visitor services, you know, water, waste water, those are things that people don’t really, they don’t think about them, and it’s certainly when you come to a National Park you don’t want to think about, you know, tap water, you just want to go about doing your, your, your vacation, and you know your recreation in the park. So, you know, we try hard to provide the highest quality products and services, you know, public health we take very seriously with, you know, providing for drinking water and providing for infrastructure for, you know, visitor centers, we provide the heat, the, the HVAC, the conditioned air. So we take, [coughs], excuse me, you know, the provision of those services pretty seriously, especially in a park situation, where like a visitor center’s a historic landmark. So there are certain challenges that come with that in terms of it’s a historic building, you know, we have to honor that. There’s, there’s certain requirements that we have to meet to operate a historic structure, but the flip side of that is, you know, we get to maintain a landmark. And so there’s a real lot of pride that comes with that and you know having a building that, sure it’s unique and it has it’s little idiosyncrasies, but, you know, all buildings have something and but, you know, we recognize that we’re taking care of a special place and buildings within this special place. So that, that’s both a challenge and I guess a benefit right there.

MS: Thinking about [coughs] mentioning historic landmarks and what not, what are some of the more primary attractions to the park?

DB: You know, the park, this park in particular, you know, the Park Service has got a really cool

mission, and there’s all kinds of really neat parks, but this park is definitely a, it’s a natural

resource park. I mean we have cultural resources, a lot of history, a lot of archaeology here in the

park, but it’s not like the Liberty Bell site or Ellis Island or something that has a lot more of a

cultural tie, we’re a much more natural based park. So accordingly there’s a lot of things to do in

the park, a lot of recreational activities to be had, hiking, biking, skiing, certainly getting out and

just picnicking or going for a hike or going to a lake or fishing. A lot of recreation is done here at

the park and it’s certainly a great place for those activities.

MS: Okay. And I’d like to return to these when we discuss the flood. But first how did you become aware of the severity and the magnitude of the 2013 flood?

DB: Well, I think it took us a little bit, a few hours to realize exactly what was happening. And it’s funny because all summer long I kept saying, you know, a dozen times, man this, you know, the wettest or lushest summer I’ve ever seen. And growing up around here and spending as much time as I have in the backcountry it was definitely true. So, you know, for me personally going through the incident, and part of my collateral duties I’m on an incident command team for the park so whenever there’s a major incident, whether it’s a fire or a search and rescue or a flood, the park has an incident command team from all, you know, all different employees from across the park that they pull you out of your “regular job” and plug you into this command structure.

So we had just gone through some training over the last year, eighteen months prior to the flood, which was really good, it was timely and it did pay off for us in particular and with us and our cooperators. But it was probably the morning of the eleventh when it had, you know, kind of started to come to a head. So where it’s kind of the top of the watershed, you know, literally, and when we noticed we were getting high water, you know, I got called in that morning. We have some instrumentation up on one of our, the park has two dams in it, and one of them we just had a project done that last summer before the flood that spring. That was also very fortunate for the timing that we completed that project prior to the flood. But it, in any case we has some

instrumentation that reads active rain fall and accumulation and also discharge off this one structure, this one dam. And that, those indicators [thunder in background] have thresholds established in them where if they are exceeded they send basically like a send alert now type of, like a, like a, a reverse notification system out from the system. So the parks facility management folks, we got a call the early morning, like four in the morning on the eleventh that Little Lake had exceeded its flow capacity, or at least that its first alarms went off and that’s what got us up.

And over the course of the next couple hours we were called down to the park’s incident

command post. So I didn’t get here until about six in the morning, but I was one of the later ones to, of the early bunch, I was probably the last one to get here the morning of the eleventh. So it was a few hours later when I saw a picture that got texted to me from down below the dam in Estes is when I fully realized that okay this is a lot more than just what I was seeing and just what we’re seeing up here at the top of the watershed. So it was, yeah, that morning of the eleventh.

MS: Okay. Could you kind of walk me through how was the physical makeup of the park affected by the flood? How did the water affect buildings, trails, roads? What happened?

DB: Well, it was, so it was, late that morning of the eleventh we kind of realized what was going on around us and. So from there the park got a little more organized in its response and it

definitely started to take some actions in terms of what we were doing. We realized it wasn’t

going to be a normal day, you know, of just coming to work. So at that point all the folks, you

know, there are several employees that live down in the Front Range or in the valley, and they

were cut off from getting up here. Really that first day was about taking triage of what was still,

‘cause the high water hadn’t hit yet that, it hit sometime of that day of the eleventh over into the twelfth, and depending on where you are measuring that in terms of up the valley down the valley, but we basically realized that we didn’t necessarily have access to all of the park’s locations. So, there was a lot of reports coming in to dispatch it was a real moving target about where you could go and what was open. In the initial twenty-four hours, the day of the eleventh and then really the day of the twelfth is when things went into the, I guess still the reaction mode and not any of the stabilization mode yet. So at that point we were still, I mean, people were still being, still understanding the extent of the flooding. So a lot of information coming in about spur [?] sixty-six right here up into the Y.M.C.A., which is just down street from, down the street from where we are, but that’s a key travel corridor into the park and the Y.M.C.A. of the Rockies, so major population center up the road. The bridges were getting threatened. From my

perspective we just heard a bunch of reports how Highway 7 was passable, it wasn’t passable, there were landslides across the valley. So it was very, you know, pardon the pun, but fluid situation, and it kept evolving that day, so. But basically travel within the park was impacted, you know, the lights and the electricity was an issue in the valley, and so the communication were up and going, but the eleventh was kind of, it was, it was kind of funny because, it was beginning to happen and then we didn’t, you know, we didn’t realize we’re being flooded, but we didn’t really quite realize the extent of it until the morning of the twelfth when, when we got up and the power was off, you know, there was a lot more, the chaos was a lot more clear about what exactly happened. I don’t know exactly when they closed the park to visitation because I know that night of the eleventh, that’s when we evacuated the final campground in the park. We were starting to lose Bear Lake Road and it was just getting dark, and we didn’t want to do it for sure, but the reports were coming in that we were losing Bare Lake Road. And our fear was that we were going to be stuck with several hundred people and their RVs stuck inside Marine Park in the park after that night ‘cause we thought we were going to lose that road and have no way to get those people back out. So, so I think that’s, when we were taking action like that and closing the park’s campground on the evening of the eleventh was clear that, you know, it wasn’t going to be a normal day for a while here at the park.

MS: How, you just mentioned there were some people that were in the park when the flooding began, what was the process by which you guys were able to get them out of the park?

DB: Yeah, so fortunate for those folks in Marine Park Campground as I mentioned they, they

were all evacuated that evening and, you know, we didn’t know where to send them and travel

around the valley was really, was inconsistent. You know, access was very limited, and it was a

changing, you know, situation moment by moment. So what most of those folks ended up doing

was driving down to the Beaver Meadows Visitor Center parking lot and, you know, I didn’t see

it myself but I heard the next day that it was like kind of like a campground, you know, there

were all these folks with their RVs just basically, you know, they didn’t know where to go. They

didn’t want to drive over to the west side. It was getting dark and it obviously stormy and, you

know, it wasn’t safe travelling around the valley. So a lot of folks sheltered basically like right in place or just down the road in the park’s visitor center parking area. But like for example we had a number of our people in the backcountry so through the park’s law enforcement folks they do the quick investigation, figure out who had permits and who was in the backcountry and then a, you know, an effort was undertake to go ahead and make contact with those folks and get them out of the backcountry. And so the, yeah, parties were contacted and escorted back out of the backcountry, and one party in particular had a little bit of trouble getting out because the area they were in was on the other side of Roaring River Drainage, which became, you know, a little creek went to a, became an impassible torrent. So they had to basically be walked out an

alternate route, but fortunately for us that particular time of the year and that particular evening there were only another half dozen or so folks in the backcountry that we needed to go account for, but that was part of, was part of that effort was figuring out okay, here’s what’s happening, here’s what we need to do about it, and then we had all the folks in the front country like in Marine Park and then these backcountry folks that we had to account for and then escort out of the park and do so safely. And so the park did that very effectively.

MS: Was the amount of people that you had to get out relatively low compared for that time of the year, or was it normal amount of visitors, or was it kind of high?

DB: It could have been a lot busier had, had the lead up not been so wet and rainy then it, I think we would have been in for a different, you know, if it was just went from total blue sky to total cloud burst it might have been a different thing. So we had that, I think a natural sort of lower visitation at the moment, and again it was a weekday so it wasn’t terribly, it could have been a lot crazier or more busy in the park so I think that helped.

MS: So you were able to get everybody out essentially?

DB: Yeah, and I think that the day of the eleventh…

MS: [Coughing]

DB: I want to say as things progressed the park, you know, in, in a, in a relatively short period of time went around closing all the ancillary areas, so I think like Longs Peak closed and then like Wall Basin, I don’t remember the exact order but I know the park went through a, kind of a phased closure event as we could both naturally, you know, announce something like that and then, conduct a sweep basically of the park and start up high and basically close the park in a logical kind of sweeping manner. So they did that as well so I don’t think leading into the evening of the eleventh that it was a very busy snapshot of the park as normally might be.

MS: Okay. Other than . . .

DB: [Coughing]

MS: . . . getting people out, or not that you’ve already mentioned, to what extent were you actively involved in flood management or relief?

DB: Well, when the, so the day of the eleventh, we were kind of reacting to what was going on.

By the time the eleventh had happened and we were, we were, we were either mid-shift or by the

end of the shift it was clear that we were under a flood type of incident so we planned on an

extended operation. And to the park’s credit they did two things, you know, they, they had just

trained up a number of folks to participate in their incident command team. So they went ahead

and activated that and got us in place for the day of the eleventh, but that was, it was very

prudent because we were kind of already functioning and so by the time of the morning of the

twelfth, by the time we left on the day of the eleventh we already had a plan for what we were

going to do that next day basically. So the twelfth was pretty busy because of the high water

head, but also we were ready for it, but, and just mentally prepared and had a plan. So along with

that we also did a lot of what we would call mutual aide with folks outside of the park. So a

number of different stake holders within the park, you know we have concession years, we have

all the visitors that I’ve mentioned, we have inholders, and we’ve partnered with all of those

entities to help them out with whatever was going on. For example, one of the campground hosts,

their RV was parked in such a way that we’d lost access across the bridge into their campground,

which we did several places, we had vehicles stuck. But, we just kind of pulled together a bunch

of resources and sent a group of folks out on a mission of getting this RV out and through a

series of, you know, working with some other landholders, etc. we were able to pull this vehicle

out without having to cross this bridge and get it out through private land. So that was a great,

you know, this, this couple had been a camp host all summer long with the park. Obviously went

through a very traumatic, you know, experience and a couple days after the flood they didn’t

know what they were going to do whether they, you know, what they were going to do when

their RV was stuck, you now, behind a bridge that had been totally washed out. So thinking man

we could be stuck here for a while, you know, we pulled together, were able to get that vehicle

out of the park and, I mean, the lady cried when she, she was so relieved when we were able to

achieve that. So there’s a small example of dealing with partners, you know, within the park. But

we did a whole bunch of stuff outside the park too. You know, we sent fire fighters and trail

crew folks down town, you know, three, four days after the flood. We were helping the town, the

county, and other neighbors, like the Y.M.C.A., and others with equipment, with vehicles, with

loaders, hand crews, hand tools, it was a real, it was a really amazing, ‘cause, you know, we’re

the federal government, we have rules and we have those for reasons, right. And so, you know,

I’m not discounting the significance of a rule ‘cause usually a rule’s in place because something

bad happened or it’s there to prevent something from happening or something. So I get that, but

it was neat to see working within the rules how much we were able to provide help to our friends

and neighbors in the valley. And so there’s a lot of that mutual back and forth going on and it

was really amazing to see how this, how the people and the entities in this valley came together

and really helped each other out. And so over the course of the next; well and even the last week we were helping the local rec[reation] district, you talked to Skylar

earlier today, with some, moving some of their materials around, still in recovery efforts. So it still goes on today, you know, even until now that we’re helping each other out with, either hauling material, or just with equipment or operators or, you know, hand, hand crews or whatever needs to get done. But initially that was some, one of the things I know I was getting hit both from my, the position playing within the incident response team and also just personally through my connections in town, [coughs], excuse me, with, you know, getting calls here and there to go help with this or with that and I was able to funnel a few of those through the approval process and, for instance, we went down and the Alpine Hotshots [coughs] helped put a bunch of sand bags out at the public library in their back door and I think that was really integral to saving the library from getting more flooded so it was, a couple small things that went a long way to, I think, really help out and, we, you know, got some recognition back and forth as a result of that.

MS: How well do you think your office or the park was for the challenges of this flood?

DB: Well, does that mean how well did we respond?

MS: Yeah, how well prepared do you think the park was for the challenges of this flood?

DB: Well, man, that’s a good question. Well, I fully believe that the phrase, “You fight like you train,” and it’s, it’s very true and you know fortunately we had been through some training that prepared us for what we were basically going to go through and you know unfortunately we had been through a few other, I wouldn’t call them dry runs, but, you know, couple fires leading up to, to the flood and those were in a park. The park went through those fairly un-impacted, obviously we, we lost a lot of acres to some of the burns, but, you know, not a lot of structures were destroyed within the park in the last couple of incidents that we’ve had. But those were great in the sense that they got the park and our cooperators, you know, working together and aware of some of the issues that we had already either known about or that were, that came to our attention. Some of those are communications, you know, with being, having the, the local town, the county, the state, and the federal government all right here in one valley, there’s some, there’s some requirements and some, some, some challenges like, I guess I’ll say within the technology and the, the frequencies and stuff about what entities are using what channels and what banks and I don’t under, understand all of it very well, but, you know, we’re still not on a digital system and everyone else is, so there were some communication hurdles between the park and like the county emergency responders. You know, we’ve since, we were aware of those things and we, we have done a lot to bridge those gaps and mitigate those challenges, but having

1

Skylar Rorabaugh, Executive Director of the Estes Valley Recreation and Park District,

interviewed earlier that day at 10 AM. Basch must have been in communication with Rorabaugh

because the interviewer had not mentioned this information prior to the interview.

the couple three things that led up to the flood didn’t hurt at all in terms of getting the park, you know, aware of some of those issues and having some tools in place to help mitigate those. And we still have a ways to go to work those out, but, you know, those are some of the bigger, like, you know, park and our local cooperator issues on a much more local issue, you know, we internally within the park formed a little emergency preparedness committee and we don’t necessarily take on those, you know, thirty thousand foot bigger picture issues between us and the county and the state, et cetera. But we were looking at what can we do in the park within our areas of influence to be better prepared for the next evacuation or whatever would come until it was mostly made up of, you know, park folks, our safety officer, myself, a few others, our housing officer, for example, and we looked at what’s happened, what are we, what are some lessons learned that we can do and then we took some steps to, to increase [coughs], excuse me, to enhance our emergency preparedness, and one thing that was clutched during the fire, which I’ll just highlight was during the floods, I’ll say, was during the fires, when we were evacuating the park’s housing areas we realized we didn’t have a very good way to retrieve call out lists and the way the park’s phone system works reverse 9-1-1 isn’t, isn’t practical here on our side of the fence, so to speak, so we’re working on those issues, but in the meantime, during one of the evacuations for one of the fires, we identified this, so in the mean time we’ve come up with a, a spreadsheet that was posted securely on the Google Drive that we all had access to so ourselves and the housing officer and the dispatch had a list, had access to a list of government housing occupants with their emergency contact information. And so during the flood this came up where they wanted us to contact to positively confirm for every single employee in the park and man it was a daunting task, you know, if you have three hundred and fifty some people and we had to, you know, say with absolute certainty that everybody’s accounted for and not everybody may be present, you know, in the park, but that was a pretty overwhelming task and we were able to do that and do that within twenty-four hours and answer the call back from region who asked us to, you know, verify. And, having that spreadsheet that we had pre-planned, pre-positioned from this emergency preparedness committee was huge in order for us to be able to do that as efficiently as, and with such confidence as we did.

MS: Okay. [Coughs] I’d like to get into the short and long term effects of the 2013 flood on the park. But first, how was the park financially affected by the 2013 flood?

DB: Well the park was dealt somewhat of a double blow.

MS: [Coughs]

DB: And so, and again I can’t remember for how many days the park was closed for, but the

park went through a closure process that was pretty quick and we went to a full closure. And

then it wasn’t but a week and certainly, you know, less than two weeks later we were already

starting to open things back up again, and so that followed all kinds of rounds of inspections and

safety approvals to make sure we could do so, you know, appropriately. But we started basically

opening up the park back again for business. Now, with that said the Estes Valley itself certainly had access restrictions from the major highway corridors into the valley so that’s, that fact alone had a huge impact on the visitation of the Estes Valley and the park itself, so. Normally our busy, big, our busiest days would be Saturdays in September. After the date of the flood those never happened, so, you know, we we’re a fee revenue park so we get a keep a certain percentage of the money that we collect at our entrance gates and there’s all kinds of rules on the use of those funds, but basically we use them for visitor enhancement and projects. So we do a lot of trail projects, we do a lot of stuff paying for salaries for folks that do ranger hikes and stuff. So those dollars have a direct one-to-one, they get funneled back into park operations that have a direct visitor tie. And so those two weeks of revenue were all lost, you know, ‘cause the park was closed and we weren’t collecting money at the gates. And subsequently, you know, the Estes Valley was totally, the tourist economy, was just totally just, it, it evaporated. So that was, you know, the blow number one. And then number two we got the government shutdown which happened on October 1, and so that took the park back offline and unavailable basically officially for any visitation. So the Estes Valley got a double whammy for, you know, for one we had the flood, and two the, the poor or nonexistent transit, you know, the transportation into the valley was totally hammered and then the park shuts down, so there was really no, you know, I mean that’s mostly, people come to Estes Park to got to Estes Park, but, you know, really the park is really the draw here, I mean, for the gateway town, so. It was really, it’s been a hard couple knocks for the tourist economy right here in the valley and certainly on the west side too of the park. So those things are starting to [coughs], excuse me, they’re starting to recover from those. I think I’ve seen enough activity in town. The town seems really busy. I think I’ve also heard that a lot of people saw Estes Park on the news, on the national media, and thought well it might be a nice place to visit, so I think we’re getting some, not curiosity or flood tourism, but I think Estes Park continues to draw a lot of folks and has a really aggressive media campaign. So those things have come around, but those are some major impacts for the park.

MS: Okay. What, what other, what other long term affects did the flood have on the park?

DB: Before, I’ll talk about infrastructure a little bit…

MS: Yeah.

DB: You know, most of our damage was in our trail system and, again, I would argue most

people come to Rocky to hike, it’s a very, you know front country, day hike friendly kind of

place. So we’re very fortunate [coughs], excuse me, that, you know, most of our major roadways,

our paved roads, had been recently rebuilt so they fared, they fared great in the floods. A lot of

the buildings and the infrastructure, the water, wastewater, systems were undamaged. And, yeah,

so it, in that sense a lot of our high-value, high-dollar assets got spared. And a lot of work has

done, has been done to fix those, the flood recovery efforts on those assets are, you know, went

really strong and well this summer. So there’s, there’s obviously plenty left to fix, but one thing

Rocky enjoys is a great relationship with our federal partners with federal highways systems. So those folks with their contractors have come in and done a lot of work for the park as well with most of our bridges that got washed or lost during the flood. So they’ve replaced several bridges and also Fall River Road, which is, it’s an historic one-way dirt road up Fall River Drainage in the park and that got totally washed out. It’s going to, you know, it’s been closed all summer long. But they’re going to rebuild that too, and they’re just starting, you know, just yesterday on that construction project. So for me, you know, I continue to live the flood recovery every day and I have since the flood. You know, for a lot of park staff they’re back on to their normal duties, you know, the type, the incident command team that we’ve had in the park that was here.

We called in another type 2 team that came to the park for a couple weeks and then they turned it back over to the park’s team and then that team disbanded, you know, in the late fall, but since then, you know, it’s been, we in facilities have continued to busy ourselves with affecting the flood recovery projects. So, I’m still very active with the flood recovery projects as I mentioned.

The buildings are settling down a little bit, the roads have calmed down a little bit, but we’re still going full strength on our backcountry trails and [coughs] we’re looking at flying in some

material this fall if we can to reconstruct, reconstruct some backcountry bridges and but we plan on working on our infrastructure for the next couple several years to complete our flood impacts.

And how, how we’re, how we’re doing it now this summer we, we were fortunate to get some funding from the, our regional office for flood recovery projects. So we’re going to, going to take a good chunk of what we’ve identified as damaged by the flood, but I expect the next couple three years we’ll still be working on flood recovery projects especially when, if they’re within our trail portfolio. Yeah, we’ve got to take into approach stuff that we can fix right away in kind put back right where it was and then there’s a whole second bucket of projects that we’re looking at mostly for trails that's going to require, for instance the, there are some trails that were either largely washed way or were so far impacted that they’re going to require substantial reroutes.

And so for those trails there’s only six or eight of them, but we’re looking sort of at doing the planning and design for those trails this summer with possible implementation somewhere down the line.

MS: Okay. You briefly mentioned this before, but, to what extent did you, did the park interact with other government agencies from county, city, state, or federal levels?

DB: Yeah, and that’s a great question and, you know, the park tends to be a great partner and

coordinate with our local folks and our regional folks. You know I did not play a role in the

incident where I was necessarily interacting with those parties, but, yeah, our public information

function and the office within the park is very well established and, you know, they’re very

professional about what they do. And during the incident I know that the park was as much as,

you know, providing for mutual aid to the library district, to the rec district, to the town, to our

neighbors like the Y.M.C.A. I know the park was in constant contact with, you know, the state’s

legislative offices and certainly the local towns on both the, mostly, you know, it’s funny ‘cause

the, it was such an isolated geographic event, you know the town of Grand Lake was affected by

the flood because of, because of what happened to Estes Park, but you know, physically there was no real flooding outside just the east side of the park. But, the town’s done a lot of work to try to be fair and balanced in its response and working with our partners and there’s some, there’s some corners of the park where there’s been, you know, public access and there’s some other little corners of the park where there’s been, you know, not such the best public access even though, you know, a private road may access the park or what not. So it’s been interesting to see the reactions of some of our inholders, our neighbors in the park with, you know, what the park is doing in, with our flood recovery efforts in certain cases. But, no, we’re very, I know the park is, is very communicative especially with the, with the town of Estes Park and, you know, the local folks over here.

MS: What were the most important lessons learned from the 2013 flood with regard to preparation, planning, management, and recovery from water disasters?

DB: Oh, well, you know, I’m glad that we did that work out at Lily Lake. As I mentioned we had done a project on the dam structure itself and that was very prudent timing. And it’s funny I mention the training that we did then subsequent to that was an interagency training, we had folks from all across the government, we had folks from the town, we had some of the Sheriff’s folks here, Larimer County officers. It was a real interagency, local, first responder, training and F.E.M.A. put it on. It was for exactly the weather event that we ended up living through and there was the sandbox exercise, was a scenario that basically came to fruition more or less with the rain event that we had. And so I mentioned that, and that training went a long way, just to get us talking all the same thing. And in, within that there’s was, you know, certain thresholds and when they were met then that would require you to react, you know, with other notifications and such. And for us just to go through that exercise was, was for one a great thing, but then go through that with people that we ended up, you know, we’re going to have to partner with was another, just to get that face time, get that familiarity with their language and their acronyms and what not. So that did some great cross pollination, and it did some great, pre-, event pre-planning, some work that wasn’t, you know, I think paid off in the flood with as smooth as everything did go.

MS: Okay. On a more personal note were you, your home, or any nearby businesses affected by the flood?

DB: [Coughs] Excuse me. Yeah, you know, my personal did get flooded, but not very much at all. Our crawl space took on water so all the stuff we had [coughs], excuse me, in storage, you know our Christmas boxes and stuff got soaked and we lost some other stuff, but it, very

inconsequential. Our neighbors took on quite a bit of water so we ended up helping them quite a

bit. And I was mostly here working, but my family ended up helping in our neighborhood and

that was, again, I’ll go back to how the flood was a tragedy for sure, but it was amazing to see

how it brought people together. And seeing how folks in the park came together. You know, it

didn’t matter if you were, you know, a maintenance guy, an interp[retation] guy, or a fire person, everybody just got in the same crew, got in the same team and just dug in and really did amazing things. And likewise in, I live in a little suburb called Carriage Hills, and a few months ago, beginning of summer, a couple ladies came over and they were bringing over a hose and a basket to thank my daughter. And so during the flood they had a hose leak kind of going in their house but someone had driven over their hose and, and got a whole bunch of holes in it. And they were basically draining their crawl space with this hose, like a syphon, and it didn’t work anymore. So my daughter went home, found one of our hoses, brought it back to them, and they ended up using this hose for a couple days on their property. And so these sweet old ladies brought this other, like a brand new hose over to my daughter. It was months later, but it was still [coughs], it was still, a really, really nice moment when they brought like a little, you know, some cookies or whatever and just a hose to say thanks, that was really awesome. But, you know, here were some [coughs] some neighbors that we would have never met otherwise, and you know my daughter just went over and offered them some help, and it was a small thing, but it went a ways for them and that was another nice small example.

MS: Awesome. [Cough] How does the flood of 2013 compare to any other natural disaster that you’ve experience in your lifetime?

DB: Well, it was definitely the biggest flood I’ve ever been in. I’ve been in some fires, mostly as a fire fighter so, you know, my reaction to those hasn’t been so personal. It’s been more of being a resource in a place that’s not my home, you know, doing a task. So it was, I guess, really interesting to be, you know, part of this area and then affected by what happened to this area, and then on the incident, you know, as a citizen and also, you know, on behalf of the park. And it’s really amazing to see the force of nature and how powerful it is and also how fickle it is. I mean, just like with some of the shots of the wild fires where you’ll see home upon home upon home just burned and then one not and, you know, why is that, it’s so, it’s so site specific. And so it’s easy to, to not think about the flood, or to think it was no big deal, but then there’s people that have lost everything. You know, they lost their house and they lost all their possessions and it’s easy to, I guess, lose track of that, because most of, you know, we lost very few lives and most people did were really unaffected. It was more of an inconvenience. But we still know folks that are, you know, trying to deal with their insurance and dealing with the financial losses of what they suffered. So, yeah, I mean, every single day we see signs of it, and, you know, we’re still not back to normal. I call it the new normal. But, you know, hey, I could, I could flush my toilets at home this morning, and that was, you know, that’s something that we used to, or I used to take for granted, and now, you know, it’s a cool thing.

MS: Were you guys able to get the assistance that you needed within your home and same for

your neighbors?

DB: Yeah, I think so, I mean, again we fared very, very well. We’re up on high ground, so that was good. I’ve, again, I’ve seen way more positive than negative even though there has been some tragedies and folks have lost, you know, way too much. We, the first responders have seen the footage from the canyon and down by Glen Haven and stuff, I mean, those guys are the real heroes. I mean, they were the ones saving lives with the folks that were really in the pinch. But no, we came out very well and very fortunate.

MS: Well, are there any other topics that we haven’t discussed that you’d like to discuss now?

DB: No, I just say the, you know, we’re, the park it was here a long time before this flood, it will be here a long time after. We’re doing our best to put her back as, you know, appropriately after the flood and great place to come visit.

MS: Is there anything else that you’d like to discuss that we haven’t, or that we have discussed that you’d like to clarify?

DB: Nope.

MS: Is there anybody else that we need to talk to within this project that you think would be important for us to discuss?

DB: You know I could provide more names or contacts from the park, if that’s a park perspective that you’re looking to flush out more.

MS: Who, for example?

DB: Well, you know, again I was just one person on the whole incident command team. So there’d be, if you want to, someone from like the law enforcement side of things or like the rangers, you know that might be an interesting perspective to bring to the flood ‘cause it was definitely all hands on deck.

MS: Okay, well we’ll discuss that afterwards. But thank you for your time, we really appreciate it.

DB: Thank you.

[End of Interview]