Every now and then, I seem to have a brush with death, not because I have a death wish, but maybe to remind myself to stay grateful that I’m still on the right side of the grass. We’re approaching the 49th anniversary of the Big Thompson Flood and the 12th anniversary of the flood that inundated Boulder.

The Bible is full of disasters. Not just as warnings from on high, but as turning points when people had to set aside their differences and face something bigger than themselves.

When the flood came for Noah, survival meant togetherness: family, animals, the whole ark of creation. In Acts, Paul survives a shipwreck and an earthquake by the cooperation of sailors, soldiers, prisoners, and even a Roman jailer, all of whom were caught in the same storm.

Disaster doesn’t discriminate. That’s what it takes to bring people together who might never otherwise speak, help, or even acknowledge one another.

The Big Thompson Flood in 1976 was an experience that still haunts me. I’m lucky I wasn’t one of the 144 casualties. In light of the catastrophic, so-called “1,000-year flood” in Texas this year, I’ve been thinking a lot about what’s changed and what hasn’t.

The pundits and politicos are making the rounds, wagging fingers at budget cuts to the National Weather Service and FEMA. No doubt, gutting public infrastructure doesn’t help anyone. When a wall of water barrels down a canyon in the dead of night, no government agency or politician can move fast enough to outrun it.

Back in 1976, I spent the summer working with the National Park Service at Rocky Mountain National Park. I’d lucked into the job, thanks in part to a few letters of recommendation from former Colorado Congressman Wayne Aspinall, a gruff but fair-minded man I’d met during grad school in Wyoming.

I’d gone down to Cheyenne for Frontier Days, unable to resist the last weekend of “The Daddy of ’Em All.” Saturday night, July 31st, instead of crashing with my friends, I made the fateful decision to drive back through the Big Thompson Canyon so I’d be on time for my Sunday shift.

That drive nearly killed me.

A black layer of clouds over an orange band extended across the western horizon. By the time I reached the Narrows on U.S. Highway 34, I was the only vehicle heading west.

Everyone else was fleeing east.

A state trooper flagged me down, told me to turn around. He said something about “bad water” up ahead. I didn’t make it far before slamming into six inches of runoff that turned into a wall of water.

In seconds, I was surrounded. My Pinto was no match for the surreal surge of mud, uprooted trees, and natural gas tanks that floated.

It was like what Dorothy saw when carried away by the tornado in the Wizard of Oz. I’m pretty sure I saw Miss Gulch ride by on her bicycle with Toto, too.

A family in a car across from me floated over the edge and vanished downstream into the black.

Then fate intervened: a porta-potty got jammed against my bumper, nudging me toward the canyon wall instead of into the torrent.

I scrambled out the window, waded to higher ground, and was eventually picked up by a Highway Department truck. That night, I huddled with strangers at Rainbow Bend. I don’t even remember falling asleep.

By morning, the road was gone. The canyon was a war zone. The hillside was littered with dead fish, trailers, cars, and splintered timber. We heard the dam at Estes Park might break. Eventually, a Chinook helicopter airlifted us out.

I took a dry pair of socks and a cup of day-old coffee in a styrofoam cup from the Red Cross station in Loveland before I was driven to a friend’s house in Cheyenne.

The phone lines were down, and my parents had no way of knowing where I was. They drove from Laramie to Loveland, and I imagine the Red Cross had noted that I was driven to Cheyenne.

After the Big Thompson Flood, Colorado invested in better flood warning systems, maps, and plans.

We like to think we’re in control. That if we just budget better, fund better, and predict better, we’ll be safer. Natural disasters remind us that even the best planning is still a matter of guesswork. We can’t control the storm. But we can choose how we respond to it—and to each other.

Because floods don’t just wash away roads and houses. They strip away illusions. They collapse social walls. They reveal who we are when everything else is gone.

The Big Thompson Flood tore through a remote canyon in 1976, claiming lives in an area where few people lived year-round. Its violence was no less devastating, but its reach was constrained by the sparse population in a flood-prone landscape. In contrast, the recent Texas floods swept through densely populated neighborhoods never meant to withstand such relentless force.

The human cost was far greater.

After 1976, Colorado made significant strides in flood management, including the development of warning systems, drainage plans, and revised maps.

Yet, when floods returned to Northern Colorado in 2013, the water carved new paths that no one had anticipated. The humbling truth about disaster planning rests on the illusion of predictability.

I made a documentary about the 2013 post-flood cleanup efforts by Workforce Boulder County.

We draw new lines on maps, build dams, and write updated protocols, but nature has no obligation to follow them. Ultimately, preparedness is less about control and more about humility and an ongoing acknowledgment that we live at the mercy of forces far older and more powerful than ourselves.

The same thing happened in Kerr County in Texas, where so-called “1,000-year floods” engulfed more densely populated areas built on the assumption that nature would follow existing plans and models. There are 120 dead and 170 unaccounted. The Guadalupe River had previously overflowed its banks in 1987, killing 10 kids.

We’re still asking the same question: Why weren’t people warned?

It’s the wrong question.

Nature doesn’t care about weather models. It doesn’t wait for press conferences. We can throw all the money in the world at weather models, but there will always be events that happen too fast, too fierce, and too far outside the lines of prediction.

So here’s my takeaway:

We’ve got to stop pretending we can engineer our way out of disaster.

Instead, we need to build resilient communities and networks of neighbors who check on each other, establish evacuation routes that don’t rely on cell service, and cultivate a culture that takes preparedness seriously, not as an afterthought.

The next flood, tornado, or fire won’t care if it’s 3 a.m., or if you’ve stocked up on groceries, or if your kids are asleep upstairs.

It’s coming anyway.

I’m a gambling man who likes to hedge my bets, but when it comes to survival, it’s not about always hitting Soft 17, it’s about how well you plan, how fast you move, and who’s got your back.

If there’s one strange gift disasters leave in their wake, they bring people together who might otherwise never share a meal, a conversation, or even a glance.

Floodwaters don’t care about your politics, your skin color, or your tax bracket. When the sirens wail and the power’s out, neighbors knock on each other’s doors.

Strangers become lifelines.

It’s a divine paradox as old as time. The Bible is full of disasters that forced people to act collectively, to lean into faith and one another.

Noah’s flood gave rise to a new covenant. The Tower of Babel collapsed, scattering humanity and seeding diverse cultures and languages.

In those moments of crisis, the ordinary divisions collapse, and something more human emerges. Maybe that’s the hidden lesson behind the chaos: survival isn’t a solo act.

The New Testament, too, reminds us that disaster can strip away our walls and reveal what binds us. When Paul’s ship wrecked in Acts 27, it wasn’t rank or religion that saved the day, it was shared survival.

The prisoners, guards, and sailors all reached the shore together. When the prison shook in Acts 16, it was mercy, not muscle, that turned a Roman jailer into a follower of Christ. Crisis doesn’t just collapse buildings, it collapses barriers.

If you live in a flood-prone area, a tornado alley, or a place at risk for wildfires, even if you think you don’t, plan the best you can and know your neighbors and bridge the divides before the water does it for you.

Whether it’s a canyon in Colorado, a prison in Philippi, or a neighborhood in Texas, survival is never a solo act. If you wait for the sirens to blare before you decide to get organized, there may not be time to turn around.

My memoir, Views from Beyond Metropolis, tells that story and many others like it—moments when crisis revealed unexpected connections and the quiet power of human resilience. It’s also a guide for how we can start bridging the social, economic, and cultural divides before disaster forces us to.

Want a head start? Grab the book. Start the conversation. Build the bridge.

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