Officials warn Arizona dam could fail

Small Indigenous community could be flooded

PHOENIX — An earthen dam in Arizona’s southern desert could fail and flood a small village because the lake behind it is swollen with run-off from the remnants of Tropical Storm Rosa, officials said Wednesday.

Ali Chuk, an Indigenous community with 162 people on the Tohono O’odham Nation reservation, was being evacuated Tuesday night, the tribe’s public safety department said in a statement.

No further details were available Wednesday on the evacuations.

Tribal officials planned to inspect the dam and lake by helicopter.

Water levels were within 0.3 metres of topping Menagers Dam, which could give way and flood Ali Chuk, the National Weather Service said.

The area near the Mexico border got between eight to 13 centimetres of rain on Tuesday. Flooding from run-off made roads impassable.

There were no reports Wednesday of additional rain.

The tribal safety department said 30 people had been evacuated from another village, with a population of about 160, on the reservation because of flooding. The water in an adjacent wash was “running extremely high and continuing to overflow the berms to flood the community,” officials said.

Elsewhere in the state, forecasters warned of more possible flooding in Phoenix and other areas.

The weather service said up to 2.5 centimetres of rain had fallen in parts of Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, and that flash flooding was expected.

A separate flash flood warning was issued for Yavapai County north of Phoenix due to high water in a creek in Cornville and for a small part of the Tohono O’odham Nation’s reservation in Pima County in southern Arizona.

The weather service said a record

5.97 cm of rain had fallen at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport as of Tuesday night.

That made it the rainiest October day since records have been kept, topping the 5.89 cm recorded on Oct. 14, 1988.

It also marked the eighth-rainiest day in Phoenix history for any date.

The storm was also expected to dump rain on Utah and Colorado.