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Colorado Flood Relief Fundraiser Raises More Than $1M In 1 Night

Flood Relief Fundraiser
CBS4's Gloria Neal interviews Stephanie Gausch of the Weld Food Bank. (credit: CBS)

DENVER (CBS4) - Coloradans showed up in a big way on Wednesday, with people from across the state donating more than $1 million for the American Red Cross and Community Food Share in the wake of Colorado's disastrous floods.

The Colorado Flood Relief fundraiser was featured during CBS4 newscasts on Wednesday evening and was also a feature in other Denver television stations' newscasts. On Thursday the final total raised came in as $1,101,044.

The Red Cross has been helping to shelter flooding evacuees and the food share donations will serve Larimer, Weld, Boulder and Broomfield counties, which are providing food for evacuees.

Stephanie Gausch of the Weld Food Bank told CBS4's Gloria Neal during CBS4's 10 p.m. broadcast that the donations are critical for her organization.

"This disaster happened when our food inventories are low coming off the summer months. And it happened during harvest time for our farmers. Weld County is the ninth largest agricultural county in the country and so we receive a lot of produce donations from them. We're going to have to purchase those now," Gausch said.

Gov. John Hickenlooper also talked earlier in the evening about how important the effort is to get Colorado back on its feet, including for the hardest hit communities.

"We made a commitment to rebuild and rebuild better and stronger than before. We'll rebuild faster. We had a team of two engineers and a facilities expert or transportation expert from Vermont. Two years ago they had Hurricane Irene. They rebuilt and we're taking all of their lessons learned. They're working with us. So we've got an idea of how big the task is. It's a mess, right? But we're going to do it," said Hickenlooper.

By comparison to the $1 million figure, $150,000 was raised in June for wildfire relief and the same amount was raised last year during the destructive 2012 wildfires.

Even with the generous donations there will be work to be done for months to come. If you would still like to donate or offer help, CBS4 has compiled a list of ways you can support the local communities impacted by the floods.

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