Arizona flash flood kills 9 relatives celebrating birthday
The Associated Press — By ANITA SNOW and ALINA HARTOUNIAN -
Associated Press
This Saturday, July 15, 2017, image taken from
video provided by Mindy Russell shows a rescue helicopter picking up
people who survived a flash flood at a popular swimming hole that swept
several people to their deaths in the Tonto National Forest near Payson,
Ariz. The flooded area is at lower right. The flood was the result of a
thunderstorm that dumped heavy rainfall just upstream, unleashing
6-foot-high floodwaters, dark with ash from a summer wildfire.
TONTO NATIONAL FOREST, Ariz. (AP) — The flash flood that killed nine
people in an Arizona river canyon began its deadly descent as an
impressive but avoidable surge of churning water, black with cinders
from a recent wildfire and choked with tumbling tree trunks and limbs.
By the time it reached a rocky swimming hole several miles
downstream, it was a roaring torrent 6 feet (1.8 meters) high, and an
extended family celebrating a birthday while seeking refuge from the
summer heat had no warning — and no chance to escape.
The bodies were found up to 2 miles (3 kilometers) away. Five other
people were rescued, some of them clinging desperately to trees, and
were treated for hypothermia and released.
As rescuers searched Monday for a 27-year-old man still missing about
100 miles (160 kilometers) northeast of Phoenix, authorities identified
the victims, who ranged in age from 2 to 60.
Among them were three generations of a family. Five of the dead were
children.
The victims had been lounging Saturday in the swimming hole, where
rocks create pools and a series of small waterfalls. There the river
narrows, squeezing the flow of water and increasing its deadly force.
The river roared to life after a thunderstorm had dumped up to 1.5
inches (3.8 centimeters) of rain in an hour, prompting a flash-flood
warning from the National Weather Service.
Though the service sent out a flash-flood warning over cellphone
networks, service in the remote area is patchy at best. Unless they had
a weather radio, the swimmers would have been unaware.
"They had no warning. They heard a roar, and it was on top of them,"
said Fire Chief Ron Sattelmaier of the Water Wheel Fire and Medical
District.
Carrie Templin, a spokesman for the Tonto National Forest, said
people headed to the forest should check weather alerts ahead of time to
determine whether it's safe. It is hard to predict where rain will fall
in the desert Southwest, and people should know that heavy downpours can
cause flash flooding, Templin said.
One hiker who was stranded by the flood said she can't get the sound
of the rushing water out of her head.
Nancy Coto, 17, said she was stuck for four hours on a slab of rock
with her boyfriend and his family before they were able to walk out.
"We're all just saying that we got blessed, but I don't like to use
that word because other families weren't blessed," Coto said. "Children
died."
About 40 volunteer workers and four search dogs looked for the
missing man, whom authorities identified as Hector Garnica.
Garnica had come to celebrate his wife's birthday with their three
children and other family. All were among those killed.
Authorities and a family member identified the dead as 2-year-old
Erica Raya-Garcia; Emily Garnica, 3; Mia Garnica, 5; Danial Garnica, 7;
and Jonathan Leon, 13. Also killed were Javier Raya-Garcia, 19; Celia
Garcia Castaneda, 60; Maribel Raya-Garcia, 24; and 26-year-old Maria
Raya-Garcia, Hector Garnica's wife.
The group went up the mountain early Saturday, said Tom Price, the
general manager at The Horny Toad, a restaurant where Hector Garnica
worked.
Garnica's parents were eating at the restaurant in a Phoenix suburb
Saturday night when they got a call that something had happened, Price
said.
"Very tight knit," he said of the family. "They're just extremely
close."
About 5 miles up the mountain from where the family was relaxing
Saturday, Scott Muller spotted the water rumbling down the nearly dry
East Verde River.
Muller was spending the day with a dozen other members of AZ
Krawlers, a volunteer group of Jeep owners that was checking dirt roads
and trails for dangerous erosion and missing signs.
It was an area where a June wildfire burned 11 square miles of the
Tonto National Forest. Flooding is worse after a wildfire because the
scorched land repels water and the lack of vegetation makes soil
unstable.
Muller began making a video with his phone from the river bed, and
comfortably scampered to the bank before water clogged with debris
whooshed past. The river was wide enough that the water was not the
inescapable wall it became downstream.
"We had no idea how fast and big it was going to be," Muller said.
Muller and the others rushed down the mountain on a fire control road
to get another look at a phenomenon notorious in the West which they had
not seen. Flash floods killed seven hikers in Utah in 2015; 11 hikers
died in Arizona in 1997 after a wall of water swept through a narrow,
twisting series of walls on Navajo land.
Emerging onto a paved road, the group drove up to a bridge that was
about a mile below where the waters would sweep through the swimming
hole.
There, Muller said, they warned a couple with two young children
playing in the placid river to get out because the river would soon
become a monster.
Several minutes later, he said, it did.
Neither Muller nor the group's leader, Ken Maki, said they knew of
the swimming hole.
They didn't learn of the deaths until that night.
___
Hartounian reported from Phoenix. Contributing were Justin Pritchard
and Michael Balsamo in Los Angeles, Clarice Silber in Cave Creek,
Arizona, Angie Wang in Tonto National Forest and Jacques Billeaud in
Phoenix.
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