9 in group killed, boy missing in flash flood
TONTO NATIONAL FOREST, Ariz. — Nine people died and a 13-yearold boy was still missing Sunday after a furious flash flood tore through a group of family and friends cooling off in a creek in the Tonto National Forest in Arizona.
The group from the Phoenix and Flagstaff areas had met up for a day trip at the popular Cold Springs swimming hole near Payson in central Arizona and were
playing in the water Saturday afternoon when muddy flood waters came roaring down the canyon, Gila County Sheriff’s Detective David Hornung told The Associated Press. The group had set out chairs to lounge on a warm summer day, but miles upstream, an intense thunderstorm had dumped heavy rainfall on a mountain where a recent wildfire left the ground unable to soak up the water.
Search and rescue crews, including 40 people on foot and others in a helicopter, recovered the bodies of five children and four adults, some as far as 2 miles down the river. The victims ranged in age from a 60-year-old woman to a 2-year-old girl. Authorities did not identify them.
Four other people were rescued Saturday and taken to Banner hospital in nearby Payson for treatment for hypothermia. Rescuers got to the four victims quickly after the crew heard their cries while helping an injured hiker nearby.
On Sunday, crews were walking along the banks of the East Verde River, poking through debris, including tree trunks. They had scoured a 5-mile stretch of the river and were to continue south.
The flash-flooding hit Saturday afternoon at Cold Springs canyon, a recreation area about 100 miles northeast of Phoenix that is reachable by relatively easy hiking paths. Some know it as the Ellison Creek or Water Wheel swimming hole.
Hornung said the treacherously swift waters gushed for about 10 minutes before receding in the narrow canyon. He estimated the floodwaters reached 6 feet high and 40 feet wide.
Disa Alexander was hiking to the swimming area where Ellison Creek and East Verde River converge when the water surged. She was still about 2½ miles away when she spotted a man holding a baby and clinging to a tree. His wife was nearby, also in a tree. Had they been swept farther downstream, they would have been sent over a 20-foot waterfall, Alexander said.
Alexander and others tried to reach them but couldn’t. Rescuers arrived a short time later.
“We were kinda looking at the water; it was really brown,” she said. “Literally 20 seconds later, you just see, like hundreds of gallons of water smacking down, and debris and trees getting pulled in. It looked like a really big mudslide.”
Video she posted to social media showed torrents of muddy water surging through jagged canyons carved in Arizona’s signature red rock. “I could have just died!” she exclaims in the video, before showing images of the man in a tree and his wife.
The National Weather Service, which had issued a flash-flood warning, estimated that up to 1.5 inches of rain fell on the area in an hour. The thunderstorm hit about 8 miles upstream along Ellison Creek, which quickly flooded the narrow canyon where the swimmers were.
“They had no warning. They heard a roar, and it was on top of them,” said Ron Sattelmaier, chief of the Water Wheel Fire and Medical District.