Michael Bennet: “I would like to thank my colleague Mark Udall for summarizing so well what we are facing out in Colorado. I thought I…”

“I would like to thank my colleague Mark Udall for summarizing so well what we are facing out in Colorado. I thought I would share a few of my thoughts too. As Senator Udall said, our State is in the midst of unprecedented flooding that has wiped out entire communities in over a dozen counties across Colorado. Last week rain began to fall across our State, across the Colorado Front Range, and it didn't let up. A lot of reports have termed this historic, but to get your head around the scale and scope of the damage it is important to express what that means in hard numbers. In the course of 1 week, 21 inches of rain fell in parts of Boulder, including over 9 inches on September 12 alone. The previous alltime high for a single day in Boulder was 4.8 inches in 1919, and they have kept records since 1893. The average annual precipitation in Denver is 14.9 inches--for an entire year. On September 12, 11.5 inches poured down in Aurora. Just to give a sense of the order of magnitude, that is almost as much rain as it typically gets in 1 year--in 1 day. It was the same story all across the Colorado Front Range. The result was flooding, destruction, and tragedy on an unprecedented and unmanageable scale. Based on the latest estimates, over 17,000 homes were seriously damaged, over 1,500 homes were completely destroyed, and over 2,300 agricultural properties were flooded.…”