Opinion: Colorado can protect critical lifelines before the next major flood

Colorado knows that floodwater doesn’t need much time to change a community. From Pueblo in the 1920s to Big Thompson Canyon in 1976, Fort Collins in 1997, the Front Range floods of 2013 and Englewood in 2018, Colorado has repeatedly learned that older infrastructure can become the weakest point in a larger public safety system.

We often think of flood disasters in terms of rainfall totals, mapped inundation or property damage. Those measures matter. But they do not capture what happens when critical infrastructure fails as residents evacuate, first responders try to reach people and public agencies assess danger.

In fast-moving floods, the first crisis often begins when people lose access to roads, bridges, utilities, emergency routes, communications and safe exits. A washed-out road can make emergency response impossible. A damaged bridge can isolate a neighborhood. A failed telecommunications system can leave residents without alerts or the ability to contact loved ones. One failure quickly stresses another. 

Colorado saw this firsthand during the 2013 floods. Those storms were not simply about water on the landscape, they were about isolation. Roads and bridges were destroyed across mountain communities, cutting off transportation and communications for days. In Boulder County, nearly every road into the foothills became impassable, forcing evacuations and rescue operations to rely on helicopters and crews moving on foot. Statewide, hundreds of miles of roadway and more than 50 bridges were damaged or destroyed. The lesson was unmistakable: flood disasters rapidly become mobility, communications and life-safety emergencies, not merely drainage problems.

More recently, the July 2025 flooding in the Texas Hill Country exposed similar vulnerabilities. More than 100 people died, including 27 campers and counselors at Camp Mystic. Investigators found that the disaster was not simply a floodplain problem, but a cascading infrastructure failure. Roads were submerged, power systems failed, telecommunications infrastructure was destroyed and emergency responders struggled to communicate during rescue efforts.

The Camp Mystic disaster is especially instructive. During what had been classified as a “100-year storm,” the Guadalupe River was projected to rise roughly 15 feet, about the same elevation as nearby telecommunications infrastructure. Floodwaters rose nearly twice that height. Communications lines were destroyed, leaving many cellphones ineffective because wireless systems often depend on wireline infrastructure. Evacuation routes disappeared underwater. 

In response, Texas enacted new safety requirements for licensed youth camps in flood-prone areas. The law now requires end-to-end fiber broadband service paired with a second, fully redundant communications system after investigators concluded that cellular service, landlines and portions of the emergency radio network all failed during the disaster.

The broader lesson is clear: No single communications technology can be relied upon during a major emergency. Satellite systems can provide important backup capability when terrestrial infrastructure fails, but they can also be affected by severe weather, terrain, congestion, power loss and gateway failures. True resilience requires layered systems designed to survive together.

Colorado has made important progress in understanding flood risk. The Colorado Water Conservation Board coordinates floodplain mapping and hazard identification efforts across the state. The Fluvial Hazard Zone Program emerged from lessons learned during the 2013 floods to better identify erosion, sediment deposition and river migration risks that traditional floodplain maps often miss. The Mile High Flood District has become a national leader in watershed planning, flood warning systems, hydraulic modeling and technical guidance.

Flood resilience cannot live solely inside engineering reports, regulatory maps or emergency plans. It must shape how communities plan roads, redevelopment, utilities, housing, communications infrastructure and public safety before the next storm arrives.

Texas has taken an important first step by recognizing communications resilience as a public safety issue. Colorado can go further by tying resilience planning to public infrastructure funding. When state dollars support broadband, transportation, flood mitigation or utility projects in flood-prone areas, the state must require applicants to identify critical lifelines, single points of failure and backup options before projects are approved.

That would not mean every town must rebuild roads, bridges, fiber routes and utilities at once. It would mean communities know which evacuation routes, communications lines, power systems and drainage facilities are most likely to fail. The state must also create matching grants to help smaller communities map these risks.

Colorado can turn resilience from a general goal into a funding standard. Before the next disaster, state agencies and local governments can identify the weakest links, prioritize projects that protect multiple lifelines and build redundancy into infrastructure already being repaired or replaced. When floodwaters rise faster than warnings, community strength depends on what was connected, coordinated and protected beforehand.

David Zelenok, of Colorado Springs, is a civil engineer at Calibre Engineering.

Trevor Igel, of Estes Park, is a civil engineer at Calibre Engineering.

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