Many of those unaccounted for were reported unreachable on the phone by family members.
"We don't expect to find 1,254 fatalities," said Micki Trost, a spokeswoman for the Colorado Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.
Five fatalities -- four in Boulder County and one in El Paso County -- have been confirmed since the bulk of the rain began Wednesday evening. Still the number of fatalities could rise. An 80-year-old woman in Larimer County's Cedar Grove was missing and presumed dead after her home was washed away by the flooding Big Thompson River , the county sheriff's office said Sunday. The woman was injured and unable to leave her home Friday night, sheriff's spokesman John Schulz said. A second Larimer County 60-year-old woman is also presumed dead after the river destroyed her home the same night.
Some 1,500 homes have been destroyed and about 17,500 have been damaged, according to an initial estimate released by the Colorado Office of Emergency Management.
