(1983 USD), which was above the preliminary estimate of $300 million. Fourteen people drowned and 975 persons were injured. Elsewhere, Octave was responsible for $12.5 million in damage in New Mexico. Following the storm, governor Bruce Babbitt declared a state of emergency. President Ronald Reagan declared Cochise, Gila, Graham, Greenlee, Pima, Pinal, Santa Cruz and Yavapai counties a "major disaster area". Western floods of 1983 The year from July 1982 to June 1983 was the wettest on record both over the contiguous US as a whole and over the Western States. El Niño conditions brought consistently above-average precipitation to the West from August 1982 until April 1983 and led to the Pacific Coast mountains, the Sierra Nevada and most of the Intermountain West receiving record snowpack. A big snowmelt in the Rocky Mountains led to record flooding on the Colorado River in 1983 (and again in 1984). Heavy and unseasonably late snows in May were followed rapidly by warm temperatures and record rainfall in early June. The resulting huge surge of water was not forecasted and not enough water was dumped from Colorado River reservoirs in time to compensate. High inflows forced opening of the emergency spillways at Glen Canyon and Hoover Dams for the first time since their construction except for brief tests. Releases from Hoover Dam reached a record high of (much higher than the maximum allowed flood release of ), which damaged levees and riverside property along the Lower Colorado River Valley, resulting in seven deaths. However, this was still much lower than the peak inflow above Lake Powell, which was recorded at on July 1. The Colorado, which is usually dry at the mouth due to extensive diversions, reached the Gulf of California for the first time since the 1960s. Due to a spillway design error at Glen Canyon coupled with the relentless flooding, the dam at Glen Canyon very nearly failed, which would have emptied Lake Powell (the second-largest man-made lake in the US) and flooded out the entire lower valley of the Colorado River, cutting off water supplies to millions of people. By August as the water finally began to recede, the dam held, though only barely. Damages along the Colorado River amounted to about $80 million ($182 million in 2012 dollars). In most of north and central California, the 1982–1983 "rain year" was the wettest on record, and was the wettest since 1937–1938