FORT COLLINS – At a meeting Friday of officials from flooded Northern Colorado communities, the state highway department’s chief engineer rattled off some grim statistics.

As the result of last weekend’s flooding, the list of destruction includes:

85 percent of U.S. 34 in the Big Thompson Canyon, including 25 bridges.

50 percent of Colorado 7 west of Lyons, including two bridges.

40 percent of U.S. 36 between Lyons and Estes Park, including 10 bridges.

20 percent of Colorado 119 between Boulder and Nederland, including six bridges.

Overall, 200 lane-miles of state highway and 50 bridges need repair or replacement, according to Tim Harris, chief engineer for the Colorado Department of Transportation.

Harris spoke at a regional partnership recovery meeting that filled the Larimer County commissioners’ hearing room with at least three dozen elected officials, city and county engineers and others who are facing the task of rebuilding after the 2013 Front Range flood.

Harris was joined by others from the state Transportation Department, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Federal Highway Administration, the state Office of Emergency Management and representatives of other agencies.

Their message to the gathered officials: Do what you need to do to recover critical infrastructure as soon as possible and document your actions to ease federal reimbursement.

A packet distributed at the meeting included instructions for filling out damage inspection reports, debris management forms and other pieces of the paperwork flood to come.

Don Hunt, director of the Colorado Department of Transportation, exhorted the audience: “We’re all Coloradans. We’re going to do this all together, we’re going to stick together, we’re going to do whatever it takes and we’re going to be stronger on the back end of this.”

Hunt related Gov. John Hickenlooper’s goal of restoring at least temporary roadways to all the areas cut off by the flood – by Dec. 1.

“I am not going to kid you. I can’t stand here today … and tell you how we’re going to do that,” Hunt said.

“How do you re-establish a route in that corridor?” he said of the devastated stretch of U.S. 34.

Hunt said the department would select a private contractor by Monday to help the state and federal government figure out how to re-establish a road through the canyon.

“I don’t know if I can promise 34,” he said. “I’m feeling better, with the National Guard here, about the other routes. But if we don’t set the goal of having the route re-established in the Big Thompson Canyon by December, I know we won’t get there.”

Johnny Olson, the highway department’s Greeley-based Region 4 executive director, has been named the incident commander and has set up an incident command center in east Loveland.

Craig Young can be reached at 970-635-3634 or cyoung@reporter-herald.com. Follow him on Twitter: @CraigYoungRH.