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Cleanup starts for vega residents
Published July 18, 2010
The flood may be nearly over, but the cleanup is just getting started.
“We were very, very lucky,” said Lori Gooden, a resident of the 4900 block of Vega Verde Road, as she and husband Skip cleaned out a freestanding workshop on the north end of their property along the Rio Grande Saturday afternoon.
The Goodens, who have lived on Vega Verde Road since 1991, said they spent their first night back in their home Friday since leaving as part of a mandatory evacuation of the vega ordered when the flood of the Rio Grande began July 5.
Unlike many of their neighbors, the Rio Grande floodwaters did not breach their house, but the Goodens said the flood damaged tools and electronics, as well as other items stored in Skip’s workshop.
On Saturday morning, the Goodens, like many of their neighbors, began the long process of separating salvageable items from those things the water ruined.
And the flood wasn’t the only thing the Goodens lost property to.
Lori said they learned last Sunday that their residence was burglarized by looters, who took several coin and knife collections, cameras, watches and some collectible replica firearms.
“The dumb asses must have thought they were real guns,” Lori said with a tired laugh.
She said the looters also ransacked the inside of the residence, overturning drawers and making a general mess.
The Goodens said they have been by every night to check on their property, but Friday was their first full night back.
“Like everybody else, we’ve still got some work to do,” Lori said as she surveyed the piles of her belongings in the yard. “Once we go through the stuff in the workshop, we’ve still got to bleach it and spray it and squeegee it.”
All along previously-flooded areas of Vega Verde Road, there is evidence of the work in progress.
Piles of soaked carpet, cardboard boxes and other household items lie near the road, waiting only to be hauled to the dump. Mats and towels are draped on fences, and all the windows have been opened in more than one residence.
Vega Verde Road on Saturday afternoon was passable by passenger car for almost three miles past its right-angle intersection with Cienegas Road.
In one area where water still covered the road, about a mile past the intersection of Vega Verde and Cienegas, the water was less than six inches deep.
Deeper water still covered the roadway north of the road’s 7500 block, past a group of homes left untouched by the flooding river.
The Rio Grande flowed placidly, back – at least mostly – in its banks Saturday afternoon, but the signs of its passage can be seen all along the road.
Water stands along the road in several places, as well as in the pits at Ingram Readymix Inc., and flood debris of every description is plastered to the fence on the north side of the road. That debris includes pieces of lumber, lengths of PVC and metal pipe, metal and plastic garbage cans (and their contents), tires, furniture, hoses, coolers, laundry baskets and barbecue pits. Most of the floodborne debris, though, is natural: stalks of cane, tree branches and uprooted grasses.
Brown commas of silt left by the receding river lie on the surface of the road, but flood damage to the road can be seen mostly along its edges, where pavement was simply washed away and in deep potholes all along its length.
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