Makayla Dannelly remembers the deafening noise and bird’s-eye view as she was evacuated in a Chinook helicopter after being stranded as a fifth grader at the Cal-Wood Education Center near Jamestown during the September 2013 flood.
She recalled feeling a little nervous about boarding a helicopter, but wasn’t “nearly as freaked out as some of the other kids in my class.” Mainly, she said, she remembers the excitement of flying in the oversized copter with an open back.
“It was so cool,” said Dannelly, who is now 20 and a junior at Black Hills State University in South Dakota. “It’s this huge loud thing. It was one of those memories that will always have a clear picture in my head. It was so awesome that that’s the way we got home.”
The Cal-Wood students were flown to Boulder Municipal Airport, then bused to their Louisville elementary school to reunite with their families. A Daily Camera photographer snapped a photo of Dannelly’s mom wrapping her in a hug at the school.
“She was so worried,” Dannelly said. “I remember giving her a hard time. I remember in that moment I was like, ‘Mom, you are embarrassing me.’”
Dannelly was among about 85 Fireside Elementary students and 14 adults rescued by the National Guard when floodwaters washed out roads around Cal-Wood, which was hosting the fifth graders for an outdoor education trip.
The National Guard also evacuated about 250 people from Jamestown by helicopter and used trucks to evacuate another 2,500 people from Lyons. The two towns were cut off from help in the early days of the flood.
Cal-Wood Executive Director Rafael Salgado, who lives on site, said a neighbor woke him about 4 a.m. Sept. 12, a Thursday, to share news of the overnight flood. He, in turn, told the teachers and parents, letting them know it might be days before school buses could get through on County Road 87 to take the students home.
“It was pretty intense stuff,” he said. “It was a while ago, but when you live it, it stays with you for a long time. I can still picture those kids’ faces when I told them the news.”
Fireside teacher Shannon Burgert, who was on her first Cal-Wood trip when the flood hit, remembers walking into the office area in the lodge about 5:30 a.m. Sept. 12 and hearing Salgado on a two-way radio telling someone he needed to notify the school district. Her stomach dropped, she said, because she thought someone was hurt.
Once he explained about the flooding, she was relieved.
“No one was hurt here, and we had what we needed,” she said. “It was just a matter of how to get home.”
Cal-Wood didn’t have phone or internet service at the lodge and was using generators for electricity. Salgado remembers climbing one of the nearby peaks to get cellphone reception. An employee used a borrowed two-way radio to communicate with Salgado, then relayed the information to Fireside Elementary’s principal as the evacuation plans developed.
Burgert said staying dry and communication were big challenges. The morning of Sept. 13, two of the dads who were chaperones hiked around to find a location with cell phone reception. Finding one, they arranged for Burgert to talk to the principal at noon.
“I ran up a mountain to get there in time,” Burgert said, adding she hadn’t told her family she would be gone since it was such a short trip and so was surprised to see dozens of texts and voicemails on her phone when she got a connection.
While the adults worked on evacuation plans, Salgado said, they kept the kids outside as much as possible. While he lived on site, all of the staff members — cooks and instructors — lived elsewhere, mainly in Jamestown. So he enlisted the help of parents and teachers to cook meals and keep kids entertained.
After hearing on Friday that the roads had degraded so much that a helicopter rescue was needed, they got the students ready to go the morning of Sept. 14.
The first helicopter landed an hour earlier than planned, about 11 a.m. near the lodge where the students were eating lunch on the deck.
“A lot of kids went to welcome the pilot,” Salgado said.
Cal-Wood’s neighbors, Denver Public Schools’ Balarat Outdoor Education, had about 70 fifth graders stranded. They hiked over to Cal-Wood that morning to join the helicopter evacuation. Also joining were a group of adults who were camping at the edge of Cal-Wood’s property.
Burgert, who rode on the last helicopter in a 17-person Fireside group along with Salgado’s wife and son, said she remembers reassuring one girl who was terrified, pointing out it was likely a once-in-a-lifetime chance to ride in a Chinook.
“She sat across from me during the ride,” Burgert said. “It was extremely loud, but I shouted, ‘Are you OK,’ and she shouted back, ‘I’m so scared, and this is amazing.’”
She said it was “quite a scene” when they returned to Fireside on buses, with the superintendent, administrators, families, community members and reporters massed in the parking lot to welcome them. She made sure she was the last one off the bus.
“It had been a really long few days holding on for a lot of kids, and I wasn’t going to let a single one of them walk out after me,” she said.
She ended up in the Daily Camera and on CNN and the Weather Channel. Her sister in Pennsylvania even saw her on the news while on a treadmill at the gym.
“Everyone was latching onto a positive story amid the disaster,” she said.
Salgado didn’t join the evacuation, choosing to stay on site, assist those who lived in the area and start repairs.
“The kids were safe, but the land was damaged,” he said. “A lot of our roads got those gullies in the middle that you could fit a bus inside. It took us almost a year to rebuild the trails. We had to bring a lot of dirt to fill up the holes.”
In the days following the flood, people living in about a half-dozen cabins in the area made their way to Cal-Wood and set up camp. People from Jamestown also hiked up. Salgado, with help from those at Balarat Outdoor Education, used heavy equipment to repair the road well enough to get closer to Jamestown so they could share food.
To continue offering its outdoor education programs, Cal-Wood temporarily moved to a Boy Scout camp in another area that wasn’t affected. In the meantime, Fireside families and community members volunteered to help with repairs. The first school group returned to the Jamestown location about six months after the flood.
Salgado said Cal-Wood made multiple changes to its emergency plans, especially in the area of communications. When Cal-Wood needed to evacuate during the CalWood Fire in 2020, he noted, it only took 30 minutes.
“We fixed a lot of things we didn’t think about because we didn’t think we would need it,” he said.
Lori Haynes-Bright, one of the parent volunteers, said she had no idea how much damage the flood caused while they were safe at Cal-Wood.
“When they flew us out, I realized how bad it was,” she said. “I was looking for Boulder Reservoir, but there were so many bodies of water I couldn’t tell where it was.”
She said there were some “crazy ideas thrown around” as everyone tried to come up with a plan to get students home, including talk about rappelling to lower ground. There was also fun, with dance parties and movies to keep the kids entertained.
“We just shifted gears and did what we had to do,” she said.
Her daughter, Shantel Bright, now 20, recalled the National Guard members chatting and signing students’ shirts. She said her fear of heights made a helicopter ride intimidating, especially with an open back. It was so loud, she added, everyone had to wear earplugs.
“I had never been on a plane before, so I was excited to go in a helicopter,” she said. “It felt like a ride at an amusement park.”
