WESTERN PHOTOGRAPHY GUILD
Box 2801
Denver, Colo. 86201

Looking back, it couldn't happen. Not a half billion dollar flood in arid Denver, part of the Great American Desert, where yearly rainfall is only 15 inches and water must be brought from the western side of the Rockies through extensive tunnels. It couldn't happen... but it did, on a black night in mid-June.

Flood damaged negative. Jim Dardanis by Don Whitman / Western Photography Guild.

Always the wettest time of year, late May and early June had been rainy. The morning radio told of heavy rain at Plum Creek, 35 miles south of Denver, presaging high water in dry gulches on the cattle ranges, perhaps raising the Platte by six inches. The Platte river flows into Denver from the south, bisecting the eastern and Western halves and flowing on to Nebraska.

Afternoon reports were of a continuing downpour (eventually 12 inches in 12 hours) and mentioned possible flooding in Denver. We were concerned because our studio was a quarter mile west of the Platte in a truck garden and light industrial area where there had been minor flooding 30 years earlier.

We were in a comfortable, rambling white stucco one-story, seven-room building with grass and shrubs in front and a court in back between us and two garden apartments. At the top of our "J" shape was a fireproof walk-in cement vault, in front of that our shooting room, then our office. To the left were the foyer and file room and the darkroom. Further left was a washing room and bathroom, and behind it a drying, toning and storage room. Big windows kept the studio bright. Doran Propp's sand-and-sage decor blended with cream tile floors.

Talking with others who had been in the neighborhood longer, we found agreement that any water might not get above our door step; but if it did, it would be only an inch or two -- at most three or four. We decided to play safe and put everything movable at least a foot off the floor. Beverly, who did most of our typing and clerical work, left early because of the inconvenience. By late afternoon police cars with loudspeakers and flashing red lights were coming by, advising evacuation. We went home to look at early TV scenes of the swollen river, still considerably south of Denver. The crest, expected late that evening, with any luck would stay within the river banks, 10 or 12 feet above the stream.

As the evening went on there were disturbing reports of debris piling against bridges in the southern suburbs, damming the flow and sending it out over adjacent areas, sweeping away some bridges. We went to bed before midnight to get a good night's sleep for whatever the morning might bring.

In the morning we learned the flood crest was miles north of Denver, leaving much greater damage than anticipated. Almost all bridges were gone, the city virtually cut in two. Luckily we were on the west side like our studio. Driving through hectic traffic, we could get no closer than six blocks. We slogged the distance through calf-deep mud in a scene we scarcely recognized. Many buildings we were accustomed to were completely gone. As we neared our studio we could see lumber from Denver Wood Products stacked crazily in the street, in some places three or four stories high. A large building across from us only six months old had completely collapsed.

Our building still stood, but the apartments behind us had vanished. Inside our foyer, in a pool amid the foot-deep mud, was a twelve-inch carp. The scene was one of demoniac wreckage, as if a giant fist had grasped the contents, crunched it together and tossed it back. Three desks were at weird angles, one standing on end. The black water had struck with fearsone force at exactly 12 midnight, as indicated by stopped hands on office and darkroom radio clocks. Through wet celotex panels dangling from ceiling joists we could see the high-water mark -- a foot above the ceiling. The smell of decay we still can't forget rose from the viscous muck which covered everything. With no electricity all was dark and dank. Busy, productive, happy Western (Photography Guild) lay in ruins.

If we had sat down and thought things through, we might have hauled everything to the dump and looked for a new business. But we loved it. It was our baby. We didn't want it to end a murky mess. So the long, painstaking job of reconstruction began, to go on for long months of 14-hour days.

First priority was to get our working negatives out of danger. Corrosive wetness would rapidly erode the emulsion. Dried in file sleeves, they could become hopelessly cemented together. Taking a load to each of our places and Beverly's, we set about washing and drying. We worked from early morning to midnight in a race between getting the negatives processed and leaving them in water so long the emulsion would detach. In the end, our loss from 4,000 working negatives was 10% and from 20,000 reserves 40%. Some new work, including one of the finest young Mr. Colorados ever, Dewey Faulkner, and several wrestling pairings, which could not be retaken, were never found.

The flood couldn't have happened at a worse time. We had just received our largest factory paper shipment, enough for 54,000 4x5's and 7,000 5’x7's, a total loss. Our specially constructed "ready box," holding more than 3,000 wrapped 4x5 sets, 1,500 5x7 sets and 6,500 8x10's, was a complete loss. Unwrapped photos in file cabinets totaled over 125,000 4x5's, 40,000 5 1/2x7”s.

New shipments from our color lab had upped our stock of 35mm color and stereo slides to 15,000. All but 300 were lost.

Ruined brochures, identification sheets and biographies totaled over a quarter million sheets. Lithograph plates for reprinting were damaged beyond repair. Nine cameras were sent to repair shops; only four could be rehabilitated. A new Bolex 16mm movie camera had to be sent to Switzerland; nine months later we were told it could not be repaired.

More than 25,000 active and inactive 3x5 customer cards were soaked, dirty, stuck together. Correspondence files and bookeeping records were all mud-coated. Records of "Regular Shipment" customers (who were mailed chosen amounts of photos periodically) disappeared entirely. Luckily, soaked checks could be dried and deposited. Fifty reams of new paper had to be discarded.

It was two weeks before we were able even to send notes explaining the delay to customers sending new orders and those inquiring about unfulfilled orders. Then, in tenuous new quarters miles from the river, we began printing pictures once again.

Progress was maddeningly slow. However, in August, with more volunteers than ever before, we were able once again to stage the Mr. Colorado contests, called America's best-produced physique contests by Iron Man magazine. Our first new brochure got in the mail, and orders began coming in again. Expenses continued to be staggeringly higher than income, however, and the light at the end of the tunnel was dim indeed. Not until a year after the flood did receipts equal expenditures. Now it sometimes seems like a bad dream, one that makes today's problems seem small.

-- Don Whitman and Bob Zangari

Behind the Scenes: Midnight Fury