Fountain Creek breaches Pueblo levee

PUEBLO - Grandma always looked north with dread when it rained.

She feared the water that would rush down Fountain Creek, blocked from the family farm by a levee less than a mile away. Amy Gentemann died in 1995, but the decades-old fear was passed down to her granddaughters, who even in their 40s don’t like to swim.

It was a fear family members voiced to city officials when a Wal-Mart was built nearby and when part of their property was condemned to construct Dillon Drive.

Monday, it was a fear finally realized. Surging runoff ripped open a 70-foot gash in the levee, flooding a house where generations congregated for Sunday dinners and holidays and where the grandchildren practically lived in the summers.

Those memories were on the adult grandchildren’s minds Monday afternoon as they watched water slowly recede from the property that’s been in the family for more than 80 years.

It was one of 16 homes and businesses damaged by Monday’s flood, with water climbing as high as 6 feet in places, said Woody Percival of the Pueblo Fire Department. Water slowly rose in the low-lying area, eventually sweeping across and closing Dillon Drive. By midafternoon, water levels dropped significantly after the Pueblo Bureau of Public Works and Pueblo Stormwater Utility created another breach in the levee downstream to divert water back into the rain-swollen creek.

No one was hurt in the flood, but the Pueblo City-County Health Department warned that the water is contaminated with higher than normal levels of E. coli bacteria and should be avoided.

Howard and Amy Gentemann lived in the house from 1926 until their deaths. Howard died in 1985, 10 years before his wife. One of their children, Donna Gentemann, who’s in her 70s, still lives there.

Monday about 8 a.m. she was letting out her toy poodle, Tiny, when she saw the water in the yard, her nieces said. She relies on a wheelchair to get around, but with the help of local family members who arrived after she called, she was able to get out before water reached the house. They were able to round up photos, clothes and a few other personal belongings.

By 10 a.m., outbuildings and vehicles were half-submerged.

It was not the first time the property flooded, but it was the only time the rising water reached buildings and destroyed property, said Donna Gentemann’s brother-in-law, Ray Mohrlang.

Her niece, Lynette Carson, 45, of Pueblo West said she and her two sisters would spend their summers fishing the pond, riding horses and exploring as children. One of those sisters, Lorrie Kochis, 47, also of Pueblo West recalled the smell of roast at Sunday dinners.

Standing on the road Monday, they also remembered their grandma’s ever-present fear of a flood. “My grandma worried herself sick. When it would rain up north, it was the only thing on her mind,” said Linda Ausmus, 48, of Falcon.

When Carson moved to a new home on a hill, Grandma would say, “Oh, you’re on a hill. Thank goodness.”

It was a concern raised multiple times to city officials over the years, family members

said. Mohrlang estimates the family warned city officials about flooding eight to 10 times over the past 25 years, most recently when a developer dug out land near the levee for a Wal-Mart. They feared the project weakened the levee.

“We’re very bitter over what’s happened here,” he said.

Family members have been trying to sell the property, now surrounded by big-box retailers and divided by Dillon Road. It’s a “ruined” homestead, Mohrlang said.

Workers were attempting to change the course of the creek away from the hole in the levee Monday evening, Percival said, and work had begun to repair the levee. He said work was expected to continue through the night.

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0198 or bnewsome@gazette.com