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e e e , The Denver Post Online: Today's News Tuesday, July 29, 1997 Page 2 of3 CSU's Lowry Student Center was destroyed, Levy said. Worst hit were two trailer parks, Johnson Center, 1799 S. College Ave., and the nearby Spring Creek Mobile Home Park, authorities said. Tuesday morning ripped-open mobile homes trailing residents' clothes, furniture and other belongings sprawled in the muck near the swollen Spring Creek. A miscellany of belongings - a Cheerios cereal box, a child's wading pool and lumps of sodden laundry from a downed wash line - floated near the entrance to Johnson Center. Ian Leverette escaped his Johnson Center trailer by breaking a window, then climbing into a tree with his five-year-old daughter, Cassandra. A moment earlier, Leverette, 26, had glanced out the window to see why people were yelling. "My car floated away right at that time," he said. "I saw my neighbor's trailer floating by my window. By then my trailer was turned 90 degrees, wedged up between two trees and tilted sideways." The Leverettes sat in one of the trees for 90 minutes, until a rescue boat came by. Through the night and into the morning, city buses motored up and down streets in the flooded area, picking up people who had fled to higher ground. One bus picked up more than 100 people from a restaurant where they took shelter. With daylight, other rescue crews began searching the banks of Spring Creek for bodies of drowning victims. Tuesday morning Fort Collins resident Julia Sandidge drove to her bank, located across from the destroyed mobile home park. The bank was closed, with a red ribbon imprinted "Hot spot - hazardous materials" - tied around its walls. Sandidge, a former KCNC reporter, lives in the Village Green subdivision, about five blocks from Spring Creek. "I've covered lots of floods, but I've never seen anything this heavy in Colorado," she said. By mid-morning a line of people snaked through the Drake Ace Hardware store, 2170 W. Drake Road. Business was "six to eight times" its usual volume, said manager Bob Meininger. He and his staff stood on soaked carpeting and wet floors to sell frantic customers industrial vacuums, sump pumps and drain spouts. The store also did a brisk trade in carpet shampooing machines. A steady stream of Good Samaritans dropped off boxes offood and armloads of clothing at Rocky Mountain High School, where more 5:06 PM