Flood: catastrophe, then compassion

For Boulder County and much of the Front Range and adjacent urban corridor, the closing days of summer brought a rain of terror.

Longmont was effectively cut in half by the St. Vrain River, with no way to travel between its north and south sections. Downtown Boulder was threatened. All direct routes into the mountains from the Boulder Valley were not only closed but in many cases destroyed. Entire high-country communities were nearly washed away in a weekend.

All those nightmares came true in the Great Flood of 2013. The effects spread from Fort Collins to Colorado Springs, but Boulder County was…