Residents of flooded trailer park begin digging out

Kiley Russell

Friday, July 9, 1999 | 3:50 a.m.

Matt Golden shuffled out of his pink and white trailer home Friday and stared at the mounds of mud and gravel surrounding his home - evidence of the flood that ravaged the city just 24 hours before.

"All my neighbors are in the same boat I'm in," Golden, 85, said, leaning against his fence in his bathrobe and slippers.

Golden, a six-year resident of the Miracle Mile trailer park on Boulder Highway, said he has never seen anything like the flooding that tore through the city Thursday, and he has no idea how he will recover.

But Golden and most of his neighbors are lucky. Just about 100 yards up the road, a larger, double-wide trailer was sucked into the raging Flamingo Wash and completely disintegrated. Another home hung half in, half out of the wash, mangled beyond repair.

Most of the damage, however, is limited to the aluminum skirting that surrounds the bottom of trailers, said Gary Childers, a code compliance officer for the state Manufactured Housing Division.

"We're not seeing any really high water marks where the water actually got into the homes with the exception of the couple that got washed away," Childers said.

"There's a lot of skirting damage and damaged supports under trailers and some wrecked utility hook-ups, but other than that, it's not too bad," he said.

Still, most Miracle Mile residents wandered around in an exhausted daze Friday, marveling at the ferocious power of the storm that National Weather Service officials are calling the worst in 15 years.

"I lost everything on the outside of my trailer," said Tom Lowe, gesturing at the broken planter and mangled vacuum cleaner lying half buried in mud outside his home.

"One shovel full at a time, just one shovel full at a time," he said, launching another scoop of mud out of his driveway and into the street.