Colorado residents face cleanup after floods – in pictures

People walk through a severely flooded neighborhood in Lyons on Thursday. Residents displaced by the floods were briefly allowed past National Guard roadblocks, where they found tangled power lines, downed utility poles, mud-caked homes and vehicles Photograph: Chris Schneider/AP

Stan Koleski, 65, shovels mud from a friend's barn in Loveland on Wednesday, where the Big Thompson River went over its banks destroying homes and businesses in the area Photograph: Chris Schneider/AP

Jessica Klauzer-Zimmerman surveys the bedroom of her flood damaged home in Boulder. Klauzer-Zimmerman woke up September 12, to knee-deep water inside her townhouse, and has since been dealing with a maze of phone calls with insurance agents. Each agent told her that her policy does not cover flood damage Photograph: Ed Andrieski/AP

A woman looks for reclaimable wood from a heap of household flooring, furniture and other items in Boulder Photograph: AP

Adan Zepeda of Overtime Landscaping works to clean out damaged belongings in an apartment on Wednesday in Boulder Photograph: Jeremy Papasso/AP

Elizabeth Dipert, left, helps her neighbor Katie Byrne sift through thrown-out flood refuse looking for valuables, at Byrne's home in Longmont. Statewide, only about 22,000 homeowners have flood insurance policies, Fema spokesman Jerry DeFelice said. With 2.2 million housing units in Colorado, according to census figures, that means about 1% of the state s residences have flood coverage Photograph: Brennan Linsley/AP

Samantha Fennell sprays mud off of clothing in Longmont Photograph: Brennan Linsley/AP

Colorado transportation officials are scrambling to replace key mountain highways with at least gravel before the first winter storms hit as early as October, but rebuilding every flood-damaged road and bridge in the mountains and plains will have to wait until 2014 – or beyond Photograph: Chris Schneider/AP