First, Bob, can you tell us your age and where you were born and a bit about your background?

Transcription

1 ROBERT (BOB) RITZEN. Born TRANSCRIPT of OH 1998V This interview was recorded on October 2, The interviewer is Mary Smart. The interview also is available in video format, filmed by Donald Dick. The interview was transcribed by Susan Becker. ABSTRACT: Bob Ritzen, the chaplain for Frasier Meadows Retirement Community, describes the severe flooding experienced by Frasier Meadows during the Boulder County Flood of 2013 and the collaborative efforts of staff and residents to evacuate, care for, and resettle the many people whose living quarters were flooded, including residents in assisted living and memory care units. The flooding and evacuation happened at night after the failure of the community s electric service and involved many residents with significant health care needs. The narrator stresses the heroic job done by staff and other residents alike, as well as the compassionate and generous response of the community at large. NOTE: This interview is one of a series about the Boulder County Flood of The interviewer and the narrator are identified by their initials whenever there is a change in speaker. Added material appears in brackets. [A]. 00:00 MS: Today is Thursday, October 2, My name is Mary Smart. I have the privilege of interviewing Robert Ritzen, Bob Ritzen, the chaplain at Frasier Meadows Retirement Community. He's going to share his story of the 2013 flood. The interview is for the Maria Rogers Oral History Program. The interview is being filmed by Don Dick. First, Bob, can you tell us your age and where you were born and a bit about your background? BR: Well, let's see, Mary, I'm 59 years old, and I was born in Fremont, Nebraska. Moved to Colorado in '82 to start working at a church in Longmont. After a little over 20 years at the church, I decided that I would like to go back into chaplaincy, where most of my training was. So I worked at Hospice Care of Boulder and Broomfield counties, which is now TRU Community Care, for a little over ten years. One of the wonderful things about working in that organization was Frasier Meadows Retirement Community was one of the communities that I got to serve. So I cared for patients and families here for a little over ten years and always thought so much of Frasier Meadows thought it gave such excellent care. I really appreciated the fact that it was a continuous care retirement community. It has independent living, assisted living, and then skilled nursing as well. As well as rehabilitation within the skilled nursing. So definitely continuous care, from independent living all the way through even hospice care, if that's needed. 1

2 01:58 MS: Can you share a little bit about the tremendous events of the flood and your participation particularly in that monumental time frame? BR: Mm-hmm. Yeah, it will be something I will never forget. I will have to admit I always saw Frasier Meadows as almost a fortress a large, strong, well-built facility. And it was something that I really never dreamed would happen here. That Wednesday, when it started raining so hard, I was teaching a class up in the chapel actually. Our attendance was down a little. We had opened the class up to the community, and our attendance was down a little because of the tremendous rain going on at that time. But I've lived in Colorado since '82 and, sure, we have rain, but never that much. So I really wasn't even worried about it. But I noticed that our roof was starting to leak. Now here we have several flat roofs not always the best but because we don't have much rain here in this area, I wasn't too worried about it. But as I was closing up the chapel, I went back to the closet where the audio-visuals are stored, and it was starting to rain it was coming through the ceiling right into the audio-visual closet and dripping on the electronics in there. So I got some lawn bags and actually draped them over the electrical equipment. And I thought, that will at least protect them. What I didn't know is some of our administrative staff was already here that night that Wednesday night and bailing out some of the patio wells on the garden level that were starting to fill with water. I didn't know that or I probably would have stayed. But I packed up my stuff and gave the other presenter a ride home, because she had a small car, and she said, "I don't know if I want to drive in this hard a rain." So I gave her a ride home. 04:12 I have to admit, I slept well that night. I thought, nothing to worry about. This will blow over. But it didn't. And one of the things I noticed when I got up the next morning was it was still raining so hard and coming straight down. Usually here in Colorado when it rains, the wind blows, and the rain comes in at an angle or even straight across sometimes. But just straight down. It just wasn't moving out. So I decided I'm going to go into work a little bit early, and got ready, and drove from Longmont to Boulder. And standing water it was starting to get deep in some places even. But I drive a Jeep, and probably after this event, I will always drive a Jeep. But I was glad to be able to get to work. And then just noticed there had been so much rain that there were buckets out in the hallways, catching leaks. But where I really noticed it was over in assisted living, which is another wing of this facility. And as we were over there, we noticed that the flatter roof over there there was rain starting to come in and soak the acoustic tile in the ceiling. It actually got so wet in a couple of places that the tiles started to fall or at least break and small pieces [were] falling down. As well as the buckets placed around at strategic places. 2

3 As a staff, we decided, you know, this isn't good. Perhaps we should get these people to a safer place. So early I would guess it was late afternoon, early evening we started taking beds apart and finding places to assemble those beds for people so at least if they had to move, they could be in their own bed. 06:10 I was just so impressed with the staff. Everyone just said, "What can I do? Let's just rally and get these people moved." So we got all the tools we could get our hands on and started moving people out of assisted living. By this time, the rain was really coming down. And outside of assisted living, water was pooling, and it was actually coming in the doors, essentially coming in the bottom of the doors. And so we knew we'd made the right decision to get them out of there. So we moved as many beds as we could. We set beds up wherever there was space in one of the massage therapy rooms, in the staff break room wherever we could set up beds, we set them up and moved people out of there. And I'm so glad we did that. [pause] I think one of the things that was so striking was just the attitude of the people. When people move to Frasier Meadows, one of the things that they often say is, "I'm not going to move again. This is going to be home." And I was just so impressed with the attitude of the residents who were just saying it was kind of an adventure. You know, "We thought, okay, we're going to have to move out of here just to be safe." Really good attitudes. 07:44 Well, I thank God that we moved those people out of assisted living, because as we were working at getting everyone settled, someone yelled and I can't even remember who said, "Health Care," which is our skilled nursing area "is flooding." And a wall of water came down, through our parking lot outside of Health Care, and just slammed into the facility. I don't know how else to put it. There are double-glass doors outside of the Health Care entrance. Two sets of them. And what happened was, the water came in so quickly that water started filling inside those two doubleglass doors and it looked like an aquarium with dirty water filling with water. And of course that couldn't hold the water pressure, so water started coming in anywhere it could along that wall, and we knew we were going to be flooded out there. So we said, "We have to get this first floor out of here as quickly as possible. And as we started getting people ready to move this also included our memory care unit, and people who were already in bed and sleeping. And we had to wake them up and get them out of there. The other thing that happened then is our backup generators that provide electricity flooded out, and all of a sudden we were in the dark. 3

4 09:18 As I think back on how we got everybody out of there, it's kind of a blur. But I do know that staff just everyone rallied. Residents rallied. So many residents said, "Let me get all the flashlights I can find." Some of the staff said, "Where are we going to take all of these people?" Well, what we ended up doing was getting people in anything that would move. Some could walk, and we got them upstairs. Those that couldn't walk, we used wheelchairs, or rolling walkers, or anything we could to get them out of there. And some people were so confused. Can you imagine waking up in the middle of the night and having to put your feet down in water and move? But the water just kept rising. Some of our people slept in "low beds," we call them, so in case they rolled out of bed or anything like that, they were very close to the floor with mats on them. We became very concerned, because the water was coming up, up to those mattresses, and we knew we had to get folks out of there. 10:31 So as quickly as humanly possible, we started packing up people and taking them across the courtyard, which is in the center of the facility. But the problem was the courtyard was flooded. We had probably, I heard later, 18 inches to three feet of water depending upon where we were in the courtyard. And so wheeling people across the courtyard when we couldn't see where we were going in the dark was just an amazing process. We would feel with our feet to make sure that we were on the sidewalk, because we knew if we, for instance, tip a wheelchair off the sidewalk, we'd be in trouble. We had some residents out there with flashlights to almost like airport landing. You know, having a you sight the lights and you head toward those lights. Which helped tremendously. One of our nurses, Wendy, said, "I don't know who was out there, but there was someone I'd never seen before. He had a bald head and a flashlight. And he was helping everyone on where to go and where to turn and those things." She said, "I think it was an angel." I later told Walt that one of our nurses thought he was an angel, and he said that was pretty hilarious. He said he'd never been called that before. But he stepped in to do the work of an angel that night. 12:03 Well, we got everyone out without an injury, which I think was a miracle in itself. There were 108 beds in skilled nursing, and we got everyone out of there and across the courtyard without an injury. And one of the things that we did so many times, because it was dark, were head counts just to make sure we didn't lose anyone and that we knew where everyone was. I'll never forget the work of one of our nurses Tara. She got rolls of duct tape, which, you know, you can fix anything with duct tape, but what she did with duct tape was she colorcoded had three different colors of duct tape and would put duct tape on the person, write their name on it to help with head counts. 4

5 Now you can imagine, in skilled nursing too, the importance of having medical records and medical orders and medications. And so while some of the staff were moving people, some of the other staff were trying so hard to move any equipment or records or medications they could out of skilled nursing to make sure everyone had what they needed. 13:22 Now one of the things that happened is we got across the courtyard, and we got everyone into independent living in the garden level. And we thought, Oh, everyone's safe. We got everyone over there and did another head count. Then we heard the garden level was starting to flood. So we packed everyone up again, went back out through the water in the courtyard and went up the ramps that go from the courtyard up into the main level Wellness Center, which is another floor higher. So we moved everyone out of assisted living and everyone out of skilled nursing twice. It as an amazing process. With no injuries, which I think is what's so amazing. We had one staff person that tweaked his shoulder a little bit. But when we look at how many people we moved, we thought that was pretty amazing. I was so proud to be part of this staff. Not just because of the amazing work that they did, but their attitude, knowing that some of the residents were scared and confused and just their compassion and the cheer that they set. "Oh this is an adventure! We're going to do this!" while blankets and clothing were dragging through that dirty water to get them through the courtyard. It was an amazing process. 14:56 Bedding everyone down, we used anything we could find, so that people would have somewhere to sleep. In the Wellness Center, which is kind of almost like a gym with workout equipment, etcetera, there were lots of workout mats. And so the people that we took out of skilled nursing got a mat for a bed that night. And we used anything for blankets we could find and pillows towels and afghans anything we could find for pillows and blankets to make sure that everyone got to sleep. That night, I don't know what time it was, it must have been in the wee hours of the morning, finally everyone was down. And we didn't have to worry about shutting lights out, that was done for us [chuckles] it was dark. But residents coming out and saying, "I have an extra bedroom." Or "What do you need? I have bottled water?" "How can we help?" Everyone just rallied so much. We were an isolated community. We were surrounded by water. The fire department and the police department could not get here either because they were so busy saving lives or the roads they just couldn't get here. 16:15 We have three underground parking garages here, and I believe it was two of them that filled to the top with water. I heard estimates of 30 million gallons of water that poured down into those parking garages I have no idea how much water. I don't know how that was estimated. But there was so much water in there that the cars started to float in those parking garages. And you 5

6 could hear the cars bumping up against the roof of the parking garage as they started to float. We lost 83 cars as they filled with water there. That included some staff cars as well as resident cars. Just to show, a year later now, when it rains, I notice people don't use the parking garages as much anymore, and you can't find a place to park for a while here, because everyone parks along the street or in the outdoor parking lots. It had a real impact on people. That night, as a staff, we would just keep meeting and saying, "What do we need to do next?" I guess I would say I was surrounded by heroes. I was surrounded by people who would do anything that was needed. We didn't have electricity, so if we would have to contact our own families or anything to let them know we were okay, we would just be able to talk for a very few seconds and we'd want to shut our phones off so our batteries wouldn't all go dead. We had no idea how long we would be without electricity. 17:58 Well, that night some of us took catnaps wherever we could, and then we would get up and check on our residents and see how they were doing. But one of the miracles was the next morning. After we had moved everyone out of the flooded areas, put them down to sleep wherever we could find a place. No electricity. But we had gas in the kitchen, and thank goodness we had gas ranges in there, because everyone got oatmeal the next morning. One of the things that was so amazing was the staff many couldn't drive in; several walked in. And so I went down to the Wellness Center to see where we had put so many people on mats to sleep, and there was the staff. Some had just walked in and were making sure everyone had their medications, getting them dressed with whatever they could find, as best they could. Making sure they had water and hot oatmeal. And their attitude was just so amazing. They were cheerful and encouraging and busy and dedicated. I just walked through there thinking, wow! What an honor it is to work at this place with this staff and these residents. It was just an honor. 19:16 The heroes, the people that had to make snap decisions on what the best way was to do things there were so many. People who would be doing one thing and get called to another place and just drop what they were doing. I know one of the things when we were bringing people from the flooded courtyard up the ramps to the Wellness Center, so many people were confused and trying to get out of wheelchairs, etcetera, to stand up, and that just couldn't happen. So some of us were pulling people backwards in their wheelchairs with an extra hug around them to hold them in their wheelchairs as we pulled them backwards up those ramps. I think we were all amazed just at the attitude of people and how it felt like we were all working together as a community residents, staff, everyone. So many stories! So many stories! But one of the things that I found too is this community the Boulder area and surrounding communities. We had, for a while we had too many volunteers, if you know what I mean. So 6

7 many people wanted to help, and we didn't know you know, the coordination of volunteers was an amazing thing. One of our vice presidents, Kathy, was I think I saw her for about ten days with a clipboard in her hand, constantly, just trying to coordinate. And people bringing food, and donating food, and businesses donating things. It was amazing. 21:03 And then working to find places for everyone to live. You know people can't live in the Wellness Center on mats for a very long time! And the way that the surrounding community rallied to say, "We'll make beds; we'll make room." Golden West was amazing. They said, "We'll do whatever you need." And forty of our residents ended up moving over there. But again, to just think about this: we lost the entire first floor of our skilled nursing, which would have been 54 beds on the lower floor, 108 total; all of our assisted living apartments, which was, I believe, 34 people, I'm not sure; and then somewhere around a dozen independent apartments on the garden level where people had to come out. I don't know the statistics; I'm thinking well over a hundred people total were displaced and had to find somewhere to live. And the local skilled nursing facilities, assisted living, independent living places just said just get them here and we'll make them feel at home. And they did. So a year later, one of the things we've done is deliver baskets and cards to those facilities just to say thank you, we couldn't have done it without you. Can any good come out of something like this flood? It was hard on especially those people that had to move. Again, people moved here thinking, This will be my last move. I'm not going to have to move again. This is home. And having to move. So I think the stress on so many of our senior residents was certainly difficult. But they did know that they were cared for. They also knew we wanted them back here. We wanted them back home too. We turned some of our guest rooms which are just very small apartments. When someone in independent living has family visit they can use one of those guest rooms for their family to stay at who might be coming from out of town. We turned those into assisted living apartments. We turned meeting rooms, etcetera, into apartments. The staff was very conscientious about, okay, if someone's living here but needs a higher level of care, we're going to provide that. So we got as many people back on campus as we could. 23:37 And now we're rebuilding. We actually had turned are working at turning the flooded lower level of skilled nursing into assisted living and are turning that into apartments. It will help us just get everyone back on campus again. And then flood mitigation is so huge. We have to make sure that this will not happen again. The city and state have been great. The health department. FEMA. We actually qualified for some help from FEMA because we are a not-for-profit place that provides health care to seniors. So whereas FEMA usually helps individuals, we were able to get some help from FEMA too. But every one of those worked with us well to say you have to make sure that flooding won't happen again here. And so the flood mitigation plans are well in effect. I'm no engineer I don't know 7

8 what all they are doing. One of the things I heard is you have to make sure that your place doesn't flood, but that you don't divert water into other places then that would flood. Of course! So it's a very complicated process, but it is being done. And I'm hoping, at least before the end of the year, we will have assisted living open again and be able to get everyone back on campus. 25:08 MS: Bob, you as the chaplain were there any outstanding or moments that helped you in that horrible evening, to get through that timeframe, that you relied on your faith or from others. BR: Hmm. Constantly. I think part of being the chaplain is always looking at what gives your life strength and meaning for each individual. And it's different for each individual. But to see the resources that some of these very long-lived people had leaned on all life long. And it's never clean and easy. It's always, why is this happening? What's happening? What's going to happen next? But I always feel that spiritual strength very often comes through community. And so the support of residents of each other, of staff of each other, staff helping residents and residents supporting staff I think when in crises is when you really find out what a community is made of and what those individuals are made of. And all kinds of strength. And hearing the stories of people hearing one of the nurses say, "Well, there was a guardian angel out there." Well, I've teased Walt about that many times. We've had some good laughs about that. But that was the role he was playing that night the role of a guardian angel. It will be a night I will never forget. And this may sound funny, but I was so glad I was here. Because some staff wanted to come in and could not get here. But I hadn't been I've been at Frasier Meadows 18 months now, so I guess it was not quite even six months I was here when the flood happened. But I was so glad I was here, because you know going through a tragedy together how close it can bring people. And it was an honor to be here. 27:12 MS: We are certainly glad you WERE here. I recall reading in the newspaper a reference to some resident singing. Can you elaborate on that? BR: There was a woman in Health Care who was very debilitated, needed a lot of personal care, but she was a woman of very strong faith. One of the things that she did was when we had people we had several people who were in oh, reclining chairs lined up in the hallway. Some were sleeping in them, some weren't some were very agitated. But this dear woman started singing hymns. She sang, and it had such a calming affect on people. Her hymns became almost lullabies. I know our CEO Tim Johnson said that he will never forget her singing in the garden, because amidst all the flooding and the confusion, here she was singing about a garden. And he said he was so touched by that. 8

9 One of the stories that I never told, but I will tell now, is one of the songs she sang is "My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean." [laughs] That was a little ironic! But the way she sang it, it was just so comforting to people. So I found residents ministering to each other in very unique and special ways. And that was a gift that she gave. Now she has moved out and has not been able to come back. We don't have room in skilled nursing for her any more. But I will never forget her parting gift to Frasier Meadows was her singing. 28:09 MS: Do you recall how many days it was before the electricity was able to come back on, and that you were able to have power for the kitchen, and the medicines, etcetera? BR: It was a process. It didn't just come back on. In fact, I noticed for a while we had heavy-duty extension cords running from an area that had power to power other areas. I know in skilled nursing on the second floor that didn't flood, people were eating out in the hallways where the bigger windows were so they could have light while they were eating. And, you know, those trouble lights the lights in the little cages were strung along the ceilings. And it was that way for quite a while. Just to make sure that the electricity was there for anyone oh, for instance, someone who needed an oxygen concentrator or anything like that that happened immediately with battery backup and everything else. But it was a long time before the electricity I'm just guessing I think it was a couple of weeks before we really had everything up and going again. 30:17 MS: What an experience, Bob. And back to the water it was a wall of water, so have studies been done to show wherever that water came from? It seems like it was just it wasn't water coming straight down. It was a wall of water you referred to. BR: We have some geologists here and some other scientists that are residents here at Frasier, and they took it upon themselves to really do a lot of research about it. [See OH 1915, interview with John Crawford and A.R. (Pete) Palmer.] And again, this is best guess, but a scientific guess, is that so much of it just actually just came down from the foothills, just because there was so much water and it just came down and, of course, gathered in the streams that run through Boulder. But what they're thinking happened here is over on Foothills Parkway there's a bus station there. And it's kind of a lower area. And they said that started filling with water and actually became a lake. In fact I heard stories of a couple of CU students out there in kayaks while that was doesn't that sound like college students? It really does out there on the lake. But that filled and had to go somewhere, so it started coming down Foothills Parkway right outside of Frasier Meadows, there are some berms you know, some dirt and grass, manmade humps out there. And when the water came down Foothills Parkway and got past those berms it kind of 9

10 turned into Frasier Meadows, into the parking lot outside of skilled nursing outside of our health department. And when the parking lot filled with water, that's when it became a wall and came and hit. Now that's my understanding please, that's not a scientific explanation but I think that's kind of a best guess of what happened. A good thing that came out of this is we're really going to look at the flood plain and make sure that it's something that can't happen not just to Frasier Meadows, but to the town of Boulder. How can we best make sure that this doesn't happen again? MS: Thank you so much, Bob, for sharing a very poignant story. Frasier Meadows certainly did a wonderful job of coming through all of that horrendous time. So I'm so glad you were a particular strong part of that. BR: Well thanks, it's been cathartic to be able to talk about it now, a year later. And I appreciate the opportunity. MS: Good. Good. Thank you. 33:17 [End of interview] 10