County Employee Pitches in During Colo. Flooding Crisis

The expanse of water you see here is all the result of flooding and covers normally dry land. This picture was taken from the property of Jan Mazone's family.Jan Mazone’s roots run deep in Colorado. The Deputy Human Resources Director grew up near Denver and graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She often visits her family in the area.

Growing up, Mazone remembers plenty of rain and snowfall, and even some flooding. But she had never seen anything like the devastating floods that spread chaos and ruin there just a few weeks ago.

“It was very sad,” she said. “It was sad to see the destruction.”

Mazone had planned to spend a week vacationing in Colorado and South Dakota last month relaxing, sightseeing and riding motorcycles with her 89-year-old father.

But as her Sept. 21 departure date got closer, the flooding in her home state worsened. By the time she went to catch her plane, she couldn’t even reach her father—who lives alone--by telephone.

She never hesitated to go, though. She wanted to be there to help. And that’s exactly what she did. Mazone spent her vacation bailing water and mud out of the homes of family and friends, comforting her young grandnephew, and making sandwiches for National Guardsmen deployed to the disaster.

“I was busy,” Mazone said.

According to an NPR story this week, parts of the state are still recovering from what was the worst flooding to hit it in decades. Eight people were killed and the damage will cost hundreds of millions to repair.

For a few days, Mazone was one of 14 people staying at her sister’s suburban Denver home. In addition to her sister, brother in law, nieces and grandnephew, three additional families who lived down the street and had to evacuate stayed at the home.

That home was one of the relatively lucky ones, with about a foot of flooding in its basement.

Once the water had receded some from their neighbor’s homes, Mazone helped pump out water and remove damaged carpet and other possessions.

Jan Mazone and her grandnephew.Mazone spent a lot of time focusing on her grandnephew through the ordeal. He was scared, so Mazone tried to focus the nervous energy in productive ways. 

The idea came to her in the middle of the night. With a National Guard staging area nearby, why not team up with her grandnephew and prepare sandwiches to donate to these men working so hard to rescue trapped residents?

And so, each day the two of them would assemble dozens of sandwiches--peanut butter, baloney and ham--and hand-deliver them to National Guardsmen getting off 24-hour long shifts.

They were so sweet to her grandnephew, Mazone said.

Within half a day of arriving in Colorado, she was able to reach her father by phone too. She visited him a few times that week. His home escaped major damage, though many homes nearby had not.

Mazone is grateful that her family is OK, and that she could be there during such a trying time.

The experience reinforced in her mind the insignificance of material objects.  

“Things don’t matter,” she said. “It’s the people that matter.”