It had been a hot and dry summer. Colorado was in the midst of a drought that had drained reservoirs and shriveled crops. As a result, the Front Range of the Rockies had experienced several of the worst fires in recorded history. So when the rain came to the Front Range on September 9th of this year, it was initially welcomed by residents who were keenly aware of just how dry things had been.
By September 11th, that had all changed. Areas along the Front Range had received huge rainfalls. In Boulder County some locations got more than 20 inches (roughly two-thirds of the normal annual precipitation in less than 48 hours). Boulder County would get more precipitation in less than a week than their annual norm… creating what many are calling “the 500-year flood” — a flood that would claim dozens of businesses, scores of homes and cost several residents of the Front Range their lives.
In the small town of Lyons, the St. Vrain Creek and other smaller creeks that run through the town had swollen to unprecedented size, cutting the town in two and cutting it off from the rest of the world.
In the Spirit Hound distillery on the night of September 11th, distiller Craig Engelhorn was trapped… not by the flood but by a dead battery in his truck. With heavy rain coming down, he called his wife and said he would sleep in the distillery and would see her the next day. Engelhorn fixed himself a drink, got comfortable on the couch upstairs and went to sleep. Early the next morning, he woke to the sound of gurgling and knocking. Thinking it was a plumbing issue, he got up to walk downstairs and stopped cold. From the second-floor balcony looking down into what had been the tasting room, he saw a lake with furniture floating in it. The knocking sound was the furniture bouncing around in the floodwaters. Putting on his rubber boots, he waded into the tasting room and looked out the window. The creek that ran alongside the distillery had turned into a large river overnight. He was trapped in the middle of it.
About the same time Thursday morning, Neil Sullivan, one of Spirit Hound’s owners, was trying desperately to get home from an out-of-state trip to do what he could to deal with the flooding and its effects on his home and businesses. As he tried to get back, Authorities stopped him outside Lyons and said that he could not drive any further. He parked his car and got out to walk over the ridge toward town, hoping for the best. As the town came into view, Sullivan was shocked to see that the distillery was entirely surrounded by water.
The next day, as the floodwaters receded, the folks at Spirit Hound began to take stock of the situation. The distillery was heavily damaged but had survived. Other businesses and homes in Lyons hadn’t. In addition, the town’s water and sewer systems were heavily damaged. Power was out and most major roads were damaged or destroyed. In Craig’s words “The St. Vrain river washed straight through our friends and neighbor’s homes and spewed their belongings thoughtlessly and randomly along the riverbed. In the woods behind our distillery you can find everything from 1000-gallon propane tanks to mud-filled guitars, drums, and oddly, a large amount of bowling balls. Most disturbing is the number of photographs strewn about the landscape. We will rebuild our distillery, but more importantly we’re all rebuilding the Lyons community — which we now prefer to call the Lyons Family.”
Several weeks have passed and Craig remains optimistic. He and the rest of the Spirit Hound team are still learning from this disaster as they work to rebuild the distillery. Work on the distillery is proceeding quickly… but the town is not quite so lucky. While the power is back on in the center of Lyons, water and sewer services have not yet been restored (at time of writing). The city cannot give a date when they will be restored but estimates are some time between mid-November and mid-February. Without water and sewer, the distillery can’t produce anything. Beyond that, the roads into and out of Lyons, or rather the lack thereof, also play a factor.
In the distillery, workers have removed and are replacing the bottom four feet of dry wall. Their pump motors have been salvaged and reworked. Damaged labels and packaging materials have been disposed of. One of the things Craig said he’s learned is to keep things high… “Nothing worse than losing a new batch of labels, or watching your hydrometers floating around in floodwater! And keep the paperwork REALLY high! Our office is in a loft, so all the TTB stuff is fine, nobody wants to explain how their records floated away.”
Another thing that the folks at Spirit Hound have learned a lot about since the flood is insurance. According to Craig, “We purchased our property back in April 2012. Two months after the purchase, our mortgage-holder informed us that FEMA had redrawn the flood plain maps for Lyons, and we were now obligated to purchase flood insurance. Of course we bitched and moaned and fought… who wants to pay another policy? The end result was that we wound up with flood insurance — a lifesaver in our situation. However, our flood insurance is only written to cover our property — not contents or income loss. If we’d have done a little more research, we might had elected to add flood insurance as an endorsement to our business insurance — which then would have covered inventory losses, income losses, etc. I read our policies in detail after the flood… too late.”
Despite everything they’ve gone through Craig remains optimistic, “Lyons was lucky… we didn’t lose anyone here, and it could have been far more of a tragedy. The way I see it, you don’t get this kind of adventure often in a lifetime. Watching people come together to support one another and support the community is an amazing thing to watch.”
