Colorado Flooding: Rescue Workers Struggle to Reach Those Still Stranded, Tourism May be Hurt by Storms

Rescue teams in Colorado are still struggling to rescue hundreds of stranded people after the massive flooding that hit the last week and through the weekend and claimed the lives of at least eight people, according to the Los Angeles Times.

State officials say that there are 648 people who still remain unaccounted for since the flooding began, meaning that they have not been in contact with any state officials. Many residents in small towns are stranded because the roads that accessed their rural towns no longer exist, reports the Times.

"We don't know how many people need help until we get to them," Liz Donaghey, a spokeswoman for the Boulder office of Emergency Management, said. "Some people chose to stay in Lyons and Jamestown."

Many of the 2,500 residents of Lyons were evacuated by the National Guard in a daring dawn rescue effort on Friday after flooding destroyed the roads leading into the town essentially making it an island, according to USA Today.

As the area starts to dry out residents are already scrambling to figure out how they will replace the infrastructure that was destroyed in the disaster, according to NBC News.

"Our primary focus is going to be on the communities that, frankly, only have one way in and out," Amy Ford, a spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Transportation, told NBC News. "Obviously, you're constrained in some of these canyons where people live, and that's where our engineering teams will be looking carefully to determine makes the most sense in the time frames we have."

Ford said that if they don't begin the rebuilding effort immediately some of the roads won't be able to be replaced until next year; low temperatures will prevent workers from being able to pour concrete making it impossible to build roads.

Roughly 11,750 people were evacuated from their homes due to the flooding. When they return to their homes they will find that many of the roads and bridges they used on a daily basis no longer exist and they must be extra cautious, according to the Times.

"We're still dealing with people driving around roadblocks," Steve Kuzik, a firefighter, told the Times. "He just drove around the roadblock and drove over a bridge that wasn't there anymore."

Images of the devastation in Colorado can be seen all over the media, a development that many fear will hinder Colorado's billion-dollar tourism industry. The owner of a fishing supply shop, David Leinweber, told the Associated Press that he's afraid people will think that the flooding ended the fishing season.

"Our out-of-state business is down 15 percent," Leinweber said. "People don't realize that we still have 9,000 miles of fishable water and 2,000 lakes in Colorado that aren't affected. And they won't know unless we tell them."

The majority of the ski resorts, the state's most high-profile tourist attraction, are in areas that were unaffected by the flooding, state officials are optimistic that by ski season tourists will have no reason to avoid coming to Colorado, according to the Associated Press.