Flood victims in Lyons finally move home 10 years after Colorado's historic flood

Ten years after a devastating flood forced him to leave the town he loves, Sonny Smith is finally coming home.

"Glory, hallelujah! I'm here," he exclaimed.

He's one of the first to move into a new affordable housing development in Lyons.  

"When they said they were building these they were looking at people like me saying, 'Sonny come back, come home, come back to Lyons,'" he said.

Smith, a local artist, is among those who lost everything they own in the 2013 flood, including some of his early original paintings. Like many residents, he couldn't afford to move back. The flood washed away two of the town's three mobile home parks and a third of the land, which is now in a floodplain.

"It was like, 'what do we do?' No one knew where to go," says Smith.

While Lyons was able to rebuild roads and bridges, Mayor Hollie Rogin says rebuilding the community has been harder: "We regret  that we haven't been able to bring everybody home."

But they are bringing home those they can after securing grant money and partnering with Summit Housing on 40 new affordable units. Fourty-three mobile homes were lost in the flood.

"We gave first right of refusal to folks who were displaced in flood," says Rogin.

The road home has been especially hard for Smith. After the flood took his possessions, an infection took his leg: "You can't change that but you always know you can rebuild and you change your life."

Life is now like a blank canvas for the painter, who in many ways embodies the 'grit grace and gratitude' that Rogin says has come to define Lyons over the last 10 years: "It should be a celebration of how far we've come and the blue sky future that's ahead of us."

In addition to working with Summit Housing on the new development, Lyons has also worked with Habitat for Humanity of the Saint Vrain Valley to replace some affordable housing.