Uninsured and flooded out, a Colorado man worries if life will be normal again

EDITH, Colo. (AP) — Matthew Martinez has lived nearly all of his 60 years in a canyon on the Navajo River and never saw severe floods. Then twice over the last two weeks the river surged through his home and outbuildings in far southwestern Colorado, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of the resort town of Pagosa Springs. Now he's missing a horse, his barn is damaged and the river swallowed a corral. The house is strewn with mud. His tools washed downstream.

“We’re in trouble, all of us are. Not just me, everybody,” Martinez said through tears during his first visit back on Wednesday. He said several families that go back 100 years in the same canyon had similar damage. “Nobody expected this.” The Navajo, San Juan and Animas rivers were just a few of the streams to surge beyond their banks when round after round of storms dumped heavy rain across the Four Corners region of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah.

Scientists say a supercharged El Niño event — when warm water in the Pacific disrupts weather patterns — is making heavy rains more likely and intense across the Southern U.S. Recent flooding has struck Flagstaff, Arizona; Pagosa Springs and Durango in southwestern Colorado; Farmington in northwestern New Mexico; tiny Bluff in southeastern Utah; parts of the vast Navajo Nation and Sedona and Tucson in Arizona. With a break in the weather at last, evacuees are returning home.

For Martinez, who was out of town for knee surgery, getting back meant navigating a mucky mess with a four-wheel drive vehicle and a lot of patience over beaten gravel roads. And he's finding his struggles may have just begun. Martinez didn’t have flood insurance. He couldn’t get it with his house so near the water. He estimates some $200,000 in losses, at least. He and his fiancee were staying with one of his sons and then in a hotel, but both places have since flooded.

Now they're in an Airbnb, but he worries they could end up homeless after his emergency voucher runs out in a few days. "The government spends, you know, just millions and billions of money on overseas and everything. Right now we need that money on this side,” he said. “We need to get this, you know, all this put back together.” A FEMA representative came to his property and took photos after the first flood. The second flood hit three days later and was twice as bad, he said.

“I know we’re on some list right now,” Martinez said. “So we’ll listen every day and we’ll see what options we have and go from there.” As he heals from the knee surgery, he's considering whether it's worth it to ask family and friends for help cleaning up. Hauling debris to the dump would cost $300 a load and total thousands of dollars he doesn’t readily have, he said. The flooding did help end months of drought in the Four Corners area, but the raging torrents washed away rich topsoil on his land, leaving just sand and rock.

Now he wonders how he'll feed his remaining animals without pasture next year. “The normal might not ever be normal again,” Martinez said. ___ Gruver reported from Fort Collins, Colo.