Hail, Flooding Hits Wheat Ridge Homeowner Hard
WHEAT RIDGE, Colo. (CBS4) - Heavy hail fell in several neighborhoods in the west central part of the Denver metro area on Monday, causing major flooding problems for dozens of homeowners.
John Holdman owns a home in Wheat Ridge and came home to a heavily flooded basement in the evening.
"When I got home it wasn't 4 feet high -- which is where the water had come up to -- it had come down a little bit. But the fridge and freezer here were floating. The washer and dryer were floating. This door here is all pushed out," Holdman told CBS4 on Tuesday morning.
Holdman showed CBS4 a broken window on the lower level of the home, which is where he says the wash of hailstones and water smashed into the basement.
He was just getting started on the cleanup effort on Tuesday, and as he and a friend stacked possessions on the back lawn that might be salvageable there was a persistant rain falling and adding to the difficulty. Several inches of hail also still lay on the grass and on the driveway.
Holdman's home is at the end of a street and the bottom of a hill, so his home was one that was hit particularly hard as an intense thunderstorm moved through in the early evening. In some areas front end loaders were brought in to clear roads and homeowners' driveways.
Holdman has no flood insurance and has been told so far by city officials that they aren't able to financially assist with the cleanup efforts.
Holdman says he expects it will take him a while to clean up.
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