By Daniel Kraker
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/knau/local-knau-913959.mp3
Flagstaff, AZ –
The rains poured down furiously, two inches in less than an hour. Torrents of water gushed down the mountain, and swept away twelve year old Shaelyn Wilson. Charles Kwiatkowski, a firefighter with the Summit Fire Department, helped pull her out of the water, a mile away from where she fell into a wash near the Vulcan Mine.
"There were multiple family members on scene, frantically trying to locate the girl. they were soaked, covered in mud. It was pretty sad, you could see the hopelessness."
Her father performed CPR. Guardian Air transported her to Flagstaff Medical Center, but it was too late. Kwiatkowski says there was just nothing left on the mountainside where the Schultz Fire burned to hold the water back.
"The sponge is gone, it burned up and there's nothing to collect that water. It's just free flowing. Areas looked like Oak Creek Canyon, like the Colorado River running. The size of the rocks coming off that mountain, mud, force of that water, just amazing, makes you realize, it's just nature, it really puts you in place."
A few hours after the flooding, dozens of people, parents and children, dug into a mountain of sand along Highway 89, hurriedly filling sandbags. Mark Estes lives in Hutchison Acres, one of the neighborhoods that was evacuated when the Schultz Fire was burning. He says he went outside this afternoon, and the water was roaring.
"Best way to describe it, a wall of water, going about 30 MPH, went to everybody's back yards, it got 3 and a half feet from my house "
Estes says before this storm, he wasn't really worried about flooding. He hadn't bothered to put sandbags around his house. But now he's getting ready for the next flood.
"They're saying it's going to get worse. If it gets worse, I don't see how sandbags are going to help, but it's a mental thing, so we'll give it a shot."
Coconino County officials say sandbags and waddles basically big tubes of straw did save some homes from flooding. But Sheriff Bill Pribil says in some cases, it didn't matter.
"The force of water was so tremendous, that they didn't have a chance, unfortunately, they lived in path of flood, nothing short of concrete dam would have stopped the flow of the water in that case."
Pribil's standing on a dirt road in the Timberline neighborhood. Roadside ditches are filled with water. Houses are like lonely islands, surrounded by seas of thick mud and debris. He says the scary thing is, this is only the middle of monsoon season.
"If I were a betting man, I'd have to say, yeah, we're going to have more flooding."
All around Timberline last night, people were busy stacking sandbags, and trying to dig out from under the muddy mess. Gary Youngman was fixing his fence that was washed out by the flood. He expressed a sentiment echoed by a lot of people downstream from the area where the Schultz Fire burned.
"Just because of one person that couldn't handle a campfire out in the woods, we'll be paying for this for who knows how long "