What is intelligence, anyway? When I was in the army, I received the kind of aptitude test that all soldiers took and, against a normal of 100, scored 160. No one at the base had ever seen a figure like that, and for two hours they made a big fuss over me. (It didn't mean anything. The next day I was still a buck private with KP - kitchen police - as my highest duty.)
All my life I've been registering scores like that, so that I have the complacent feeling that I'm highly intelligent, and I expect other people to think so too. Actually, though, don't such scores simply mean that I am very good at answering the type of academic questions that are considered worthy of answers by people who make up the intelligence tests - people with intellectual bents similar to mine?
For instance, I had an auto-repair man once, who, on these intelligence tests, could not possibly have scored more than 80, by my estimate. I always took it for granted that I was far more intelligent than he was. Yet, when anything went wrong with my car I hastened to him with it, watched him anxiously as he explored its vitals, and listened to his pronouncements as though they were divine oracles - and he always fixed my car.
Well, then, suppose my auto-repair man devised questions for an intelligence test. Or suppose a carpenter did, or a farmer, or, indeed, almost anyone but an academician. By every one of those tests, I'd prove myself a moron, and I'd be a moron, too. In a world where I could not use my academic training and my verbal talents but had to do something intricate or hard, working with my hands, I would do poorly. My intelligence, then, is not absolute but is a function of the society I live in and of the fact that a small subsection of that society has managed to foist itself on the rest as an arbiter of such matters.
Consider my auto-repair man, again. He had a habit of telling me jokes whenever he saw me. One time he raised his head from under the automobile hood to say: "Doc, a deaf-and-mute guy went into a hardware store to ask for some nails. He put two fingers together on the counter and made hammering motions with the other hand. The clerk brought him a hammer. He shook his head and pointed to the two fingers he was hammering. The clerk brought him nails. He picked out the sizes he wanted, and left. Well, doc, the next guy who came in was a blind man. He wanted scissors. How do you suppose he asked for them?"
Indulgently, I lifted by right hand and made scissoring motions with my first two fingers. Whereupon my auto-repair man laughed raucously and said, "Why, you dumb jerk, He used his voice and asked for them." Then he said smugly, "I've been trying that on all my customers today." "Did you catch many?" I asked. "Quite a few," he said, "but I knew for sure I'd catch you." "Why is that?" I asked. "Because you're so goddamned educated, doc, I knew you couldn't be very smart."
And I have an uneasy feeling he had something there.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Thursday, January 1, 2009
towitall.blogspot.com
I've started a new blog with a few of my friends, in hopes that we can write more constantly and get more readers at
towitall.blogspot.com
towitall.blogspot.com
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Why I despise McCain, Palin, Biden, and Obama
McCain is old. There's a 50% chance of him dying in office. And he has a temper. In 2000, he almost left the Republican party for the Democrat party. He was a member of the Keating 5, the 5 Senators who intervened on behalf of Charles Keating, Jr. who had defrauded Americans during the Lincoln Savings and Loan collapse. He urged the Reagan administration to meet RENAMO, a Mozambique terrorist group - without precondition.
But most of all, I just don't like him. I think he's a hypocrite and a huge won at that. Any faults that he finds with Obama can easily be seen with himself or Palin. He has changed his mind drastically in the past year on many issues. A year ago he said that he would have attacked Iraq before 911 and would be there for a hundred years. He is a warmonger. He said in January that he has no knowledge of economics.
He supports a major tax change that would affect the lower class more drastically then "socialism". Your employer provided health care would be taxed. That would throw good health care out the window. Many people will opt not to have health care rather than pay higher taxes.
And he chose Palin. President Bush tried to appoint Harriett Myers to the Supreme court when no one knew anything about her - except that she had been his personal lawyer for decades. I would be afraid that McCain would chose members of his administration like Palin chose members of her governship's administration - close friends and allies who are not necessarily qualified for any job.
Palin is the biggest example of poor judgement. Nevermind the $150,000 that was her fall wardrobe. Or the million+ a year that she earns. She's just like the rest of us, except, if the current mayor of Wasilla, AK is any indication, lazier. Her background includes winning a beauty pageant, dropping out of four colleges, being a sports reporter, being a mayor of Wasilla for 6 years, and being a governor for a year. An interview with the current mayor of Wasilla, AK reveals that the mayor doesn't manage any departments, services, other then signing checks on Thursdays. A demanding job, I'm sure. As mayor, she supported the "Bridge to Nowhere" only to claim that she never did later. She put friends from high school in office. She was found guilty of firing a State Trooper because he had divorced her sister. Her husband was part of the party that wanted to succeed from the USA. Her campaign manager says she has gone rogue. She cannot say a cogent sentence without queue cards.
Next is Biden. He hates the internet as we know it. His bills have been strictly anti-current day internet. He wants emails to never be encrypted. He supports internet taxes. He wants all the music on your computer to have DMCA - even past songs that you may own (you would have to repurchase your music). He supports "net-neutrality" - a misnomer that really means the opposite of what it infers.
And then Obama. I actually don't care about him supposedly "not being an American citizen" - the Democrat party would not take that gamble this late in the game. It doesn't bother me that he won't say the pledge of allegiance - the words were changed in 1960 anyway and I'm pretty sure that there are phrases in it that the founders did not intend (and what's so special about the flag? I pledge allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of America - not its flag.) It doesn't bother me that his middle name is Osama - it's only a name and a famous one at that. (What does bother me isn't him but the racist comments that many people make about him.)
My gripes with Obama are exactly my gripes with all the other four previous contenders. They are all the same when it comes down to the nitty-gritty. None of them are different.
(Note: In the following, "they all" does not refer to Palin, who does not have the experience to have actually have voted for the following.)
They have all supported the economic sell-out, I mean bail-out package. They were ardent on getting it done quickly, even though time obviously was not needed (the stock market dropped 700 points the Monday after it passed).
They have all supported Acts that ruin our Constitution, particularly the the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act, which do away with half of the Bill of Rights and give the President dictatorial powers in "a national emergency".
They have all called for more war. McCain is belligerent towards the Russians. Obama has called for US military action crossing the border into Pakistan. They all haved called for military threats against Iran.
They are all members of the Council on Foreign Relations, whose most notable accomplishment is NAFTA, the trade agreement that many in Midwest would claim has caused lost jobs. NAFTA is also why our foods are currently unlabelled with the country of origin. NAFTA has quite possibly been responsible for lost jobs in Mexico - who import many of their fruits from other countries, despite plenty of them being homegrown. If CFR has anything to do with it, expect an international government sponsored bank soon here in America - similar to Europe's move to a centralized European bank.
I'm pretty sure both candidates would continue to "fight terrorism" with one hand and with the other and give money to terrorist groups, or future terrorist groups. We give billions to people like Musharraf and then we go to war with them.
To me, the choice for President is between war and socialism. Since war leads to economic depression (pouring money into another country that doesn't raise any revenues is pretty bad for the economy) and depression leads to socialism, I cannot support McCain. Since socialism leads to a lack of competition (so do capitalistic monopolies) I cannot support Obama. Since both candidates support similar policies that degrade civil liberties, that support war, that swipe more money from poor hands, that continue our failed economic policies, I cannot
But most of all, I just don't like him. I think he's a hypocrite and a huge won at that. Any faults that he finds with Obama can easily be seen with himself or Palin. He has changed his mind drastically in the past year on many issues. A year ago he said that he would have attacked Iraq before 911 and would be there for a hundred years. He is a warmonger. He said in January that he has no knowledge of economics.
He supports a major tax change that would affect the lower class more drastically then "socialism". Your employer provided health care would be taxed. That would throw good health care out the window. Many people will opt not to have health care rather than pay higher taxes.
And he chose Palin. President Bush tried to appoint Harriett Myers to the Supreme court when no one knew anything about her - except that she had been his personal lawyer for decades. I would be afraid that McCain would chose members of his administration like Palin chose members of her governship's administration - close friends and allies who are not necessarily qualified for any job.
Palin is the biggest example of poor judgement. Nevermind the $150,000 that was her fall wardrobe. Or the million+ a year that she earns. She's just like the rest of us, except, if the current mayor of Wasilla, AK is any indication, lazier. Her background includes winning a beauty pageant, dropping out of four colleges, being a sports reporter, being a mayor of Wasilla for 6 years, and being a governor for a year. An interview with the current mayor of Wasilla, AK reveals that the mayor doesn't manage any departments, services, other then signing checks on Thursdays. A demanding job, I'm sure. As mayor, she supported the "Bridge to Nowhere" only to claim that she never did later. She put friends from high school in office. She was found guilty of firing a State Trooper because he had divorced her sister. Her husband was part of the party that wanted to succeed from the USA. Her campaign manager says she has gone rogue. She cannot say a cogent sentence without queue cards.
Next is Biden. He hates the internet as we know it. His bills have been strictly anti-current day internet. He wants emails to never be encrypted. He supports internet taxes. He wants all the music on your computer to have DMCA - even past songs that you may own (you would have to repurchase your music). He supports "net-neutrality" - a misnomer that really means the opposite of what it infers.
And then Obama. I actually don't care about him supposedly "not being an American citizen" - the Democrat party would not take that gamble this late in the game. It doesn't bother me that he won't say the pledge of allegiance - the words were changed in 1960 anyway and I'm pretty sure that there are phrases in it that the founders did not intend (and what's so special about the flag? I pledge allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of America - not its flag.) It doesn't bother me that his middle name is Osama - it's only a name and a famous one at that. (What does bother me isn't him but the racist comments that many people make about him.)
My gripes with Obama are exactly my gripes with all the other four previous contenders. They are all the same when it comes down to the nitty-gritty. None of them are different.
(Note: In the following, "they all" does not refer to Palin, who does not have the experience to have actually have voted for the following.)
They have all supported the economic sell-out, I mean bail-out package. They were ardent on getting it done quickly, even though time obviously was not needed (the stock market dropped 700 points the Monday after it passed).
They have all supported Acts that ruin our Constitution, particularly the the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act, which do away with half of the Bill of Rights and give the President dictatorial powers in "a national emergency".
They have all called for more war. McCain is belligerent towards the Russians. Obama has called for US military action crossing the border into Pakistan. They all haved called for military threats against Iran.
They are all members of the Council on Foreign Relations, whose most notable accomplishment is NAFTA, the trade agreement that many in Midwest would claim has caused lost jobs. NAFTA is also why our foods are currently unlabelled with the country of origin. NAFTA has quite possibly been responsible for lost jobs in Mexico - who import many of their fruits from other countries, despite plenty of them being homegrown. If CFR has anything to do with it, expect an international government sponsored bank soon here in America - similar to Europe's move to a centralized European bank.
I'm pretty sure both candidates would continue to "fight terrorism" with one hand and with the other and give money to terrorist groups, or future terrorist groups. We give billions to people like Musharraf and then we go to war with them.
To me, the choice for President is between war and socialism. Since war leads to economic depression (pouring money into another country that doesn't raise any revenues is pretty bad for the economy) and depression leads to socialism, I cannot support McCain. Since socialism leads to a lack of competition (so do capitalistic monopolies) I cannot support Obama. Since both candidates support similar policies that degrade civil liberties, that support war, that swipe more money from poor hands, that continue our failed economic policies, I cannot
Thursday, October 2, 2008
The status of our economic system
The President wasn't a great leader last week. Instead of attempting to restore confidence in our system, he stated, "Give us a trillion dollars, or everything fails." Wait. What? At that point, it didn't matter whether they really needed a trillion dollars, his lack of confidence would cause banks to fail.
Is this bail out really necessary? If I make a lot of cars and people buy my cars, then my stock will go up. But if people stop buying my cars, then my stock should go down. Unless someone keeps buying my stocks, even though I'm not selling any cars. If I don't tell anyone that I'm not selling any cars, then my stocks look good and keep rising. At least short term.
What we have here in the bail out is effectively the same thing. We, the American people, are supposed to buy stocks that aren't worth a darn.
If the bill didn't pass, sure there would be hard times. Yes, even on Main Street. Car dealers won't be able to give out the same number of loans. Not as many houses will be able to be sold. Cities won't be to able to issue bonds at the same low interest rates. Many people could lose their 401K's invested in money market accounts (except that they are now insured). That's bad.
As of 2007, there was $700 billion dollars in circulation. This bill is supposed to buy bad debt (stocks) putting $900 dollars into circulation. That means the dollar will be worth half of what it was before. (Forgetting about debt based inflation for a moment.)
And this $900 billion will be "invested" in Wall Street. Why $900 billion? That number was just made up by Secretary Paulson. Congress and the Senate have not seen any analysis as to why it should be $900 billion.
There's a few other things to the bill. Raising the $250,000 FDIC limit is reasonable. A tax cut for the middle class though? I'm all for tax cuts, but isn't that contradictory based on the rest of the bill? So.. they are going to pay for this not by taxing us but just by printing money?? Is that how?
The worst part of the original bill was giving dictatorial power to Secretary Paulson. The original bill called for the $700 billion to be under his jurisdiction, without any further possibility for review or being able to be taken to court.
As one Senator put it, "Suppose some boats are sinking in a reservoir. You want to stop boats from sinking. So you blow up the dam. That's this bill."
The bill is simply too extreme. Doing nothing is extreme but a heckuva lot less extreme. The bill makes us more communist then any other country. How are we supposed to preach democracy and free market principles to other countries if we don't even follow those principles?
I blame Ben Bernanke and his colleagues for everything. He, who is in charge of the Federal Reserve and interest rates, claimed there is no housing bubble two years ago. He withdrew $125 billion this last week from the banking system. http://market-ticker.denninger.net/uploads/drain.png
If we keep propping up a system that is unviable, we could be doing it for decades, costing a lot more then a trillion dollars. If we allow assets to come down to their true values, then we might have a recession for a year. We're pretty much stuck no matter what happens. The question for us is simple - do we want to attempt to stall the inevitable and make it worse, or just go through with it.
How do we solve this?
End all Enron modeled companies. That is, end these companies that are simply balance sheet games but do nothing and have nothing.
Allow less amount of loans per dollar in the bank. Banks that failed had $80 dollars loaned out per dollar in the bank. The limit was eight times lower 5 years ago. (Didn't Bernanke become Chairman then?)
Regulate more exchanges such as OTC derivatives.
If we do pump money into the economy, do it less at a time, under the oversight of Congress each time and not some unelected official.
Although extreme, end the Federal Reserve. They are the true-ist culprits in all of this. The Federal Reserve was established by only 3 Senators in the early 1900's, over a holiday break. Many argue that if the Federal Reserve hadn't gotten involved in the Great Depression, it only would've lasted a year or two - not a decade. They are the ones establishing artificial loan rates. They are the ones controlling our money supply and inflation. They seem to have many conflicts of interest.
Most importantly, listen to Ron Paul. His predictions, years in advance, have always been spot on. (And Senator Shelby - he actually seems reasonable.)
Is this bail out really necessary? If I make a lot of cars and people buy my cars, then my stock will go up. But if people stop buying my cars, then my stock should go down. Unless someone keeps buying my stocks, even though I'm not selling any cars. If I don't tell anyone that I'm not selling any cars, then my stocks look good and keep rising. At least short term.
What we have here in the bail out is effectively the same thing. We, the American people, are supposed to buy stocks that aren't worth a darn.
If the bill didn't pass, sure there would be hard times. Yes, even on Main Street. Car dealers won't be able to give out the same number of loans. Not as many houses will be able to be sold. Cities won't be to able to issue bonds at the same low interest rates. Many people could lose their 401K's invested in money market accounts (except that they are now insured). That's bad.
As of 2007, there was $700 billion dollars in circulation. This bill is supposed to buy bad debt (stocks) putting $900 dollars into circulation. That means the dollar will be worth half of what it was before. (Forgetting about debt based inflation for a moment.)
And this $900 billion will be "invested" in Wall Street. Why $900 billion? That number was just made up by Secretary Paulson. Congress and the Senate have not seen any analysis as to why it should be $900 billion.
There's a few other things to the bill. Raising the $250,000 FDIC limit is reasonable. A tax cut for the middle class though? I'm all for tax cuts, but isn't that contradictory based on the rest of the bill? So.. they are going to pay for this not by taxing us but just by printing money?? Is that how?
The worst part of the original bill was giving dictatorial power to Secretary Paulson. The original bill called for the $700 billion to be under his jurisdiction, without any further possibility for review or being able to be taken to court.
As one Senator put it, "Suppose some boats are sinking in a reservoir. You want to stop boats from sinking. So you blow up the dam. That's this bill."
The bill is simply too extreme. Doing nothing is extreme but a heckuva lot less extreme. The bill makes us more communist then any other country. How are we supposed to preach democracy and free market principles to other countries if we don't even follow those principles?
I blame Ben Bernanke and his colleagues for everything. He, who is in charge of the Federal Reserve and interest rates, claimed there is no housing bubble two years ago. He withdrew $125 billion this last week from the banking system. http://market-ticker.denninger.net/uploads/drain.png
If we keep propping up a system that is unviable, we could be doing it for decades, costing a lot more then a trillion dollars. If we allow assets to come down to their true values, then we might have a recession for a year. We're pretty much stuck no matter what happens. The question for us is simple - do we want to attempt to stall the inevitable and make it worse, or just go through with it.
How do we solve this?
End all Enron modeled companies. That is, end these companies that are simply balance sheet games but do nothing and have nothing.
Allow less amount of loans per dollar in the bank. Banks that failed had $80 dollars loaned out per dollar in the bank. The limit was eight times lower 5 years ago. (Didn't Bernanke become Chairman then?)
Regulate more exchanges such as OTC derivatives.
If we do pump money into the economy, do it less at a time, under the oversight of Congress each time and not some unelected official.
Although extreme, end the Federal Reserve. They are the true-ist culprits in all of this. The Federal Reserve was established by only 3 Senators in the early 1900's, over a holiday break. Many argue that if the Federal Reserve hadn't gotten involved in the Great Depression, it only would've lasted a year or two - not a decade. They are the ones establishing artificial loan rates. They are the ones controlling our money supply and inflation. They seem to have many conflicts of interest.
Most importantly, listen to Ron Paul. His predictions, years in advance, have always been spot on. (And Senator Shelby - he actually seems reasonable.)
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Ah to be home
It's been a week now since I walked through a cactus patches with nothing but my wet socks on. I'm more absent-minded now then I was a week ago. It's kind of funny what life throws at you. Four weeks ago I was rear-ended by a car. Three weeks ago I was on a pioneer trek. Two weeks ago I was planning to go down Bridal Veil Falls in Provo, but that was closed to forest fires. So we went tubing down the Weber River. Last weekend, I was at a place called Bridal Veil Falls a few years ago, but I ended up being in danger of floods instead of water.
I tend to have a way of getting into disasters. It's kind of fun.
When I came home, my little niece said, "You were dead. But then you came back alive." I wasn't listed on the Red Cross site when I was in Havasupai. My friends and work was worried. What about my family? I had called them to let them know I was okay. Little kids say the darndest things. My niece said that same day that my legs were so hairy because I have lived with gorillas.
I'm a little different now. I think. Only time can tell. At the end of the trip, I really didn't care how clean I was, how I smelt, what I ate, or even if I did eat - all I knew is that I was happy. I'm not quite sure why. Being out in the wilderness kind of does that to you. When you have a chance to get away from all the distractions of our lives, you aren't as worried by them.
Was I ever afraid? Yes, but only when I had time to be afraid. When the events were happening, I only thought about what the smartest next move would be. I analyzed the speed of the water and my own speed. I was more afraid for others after the flood had come.
But what were we to do? Our path had been flooded. By the time the floods would have reached the others, it would have been too late for us to do anything. We had no equipment, no gear, or anything to help them with. They were three miles from us, and surely, they would receive help from a helicopter by then. We could only try to get some sleep and hope to do as much as we could when the floods had receded, regardless of what that meant.
Since then, I have been a little bit more absent minded. In church today, I started to play an extra verse, when everyone was done singing. I didn't turn to the scriptures being read. I forgot to stand up when it was my turn to stand up.
I don't know if I'll be changed by the experience. I hope I will be for the better. I haven't eaten as much, and I've begun exercising. I haven't been as concerned what others think. I hope not to be selfish. But I am a little distracted.
www.havasupaiflood.com
I tend to have a way of getting into disasters. It's kind of fun.
When I came home, my little niece said, "You were dead. But then you came back alive." I wasn't listed on the Red Cross site when I was in Havasupai. My friends and work was worried. What about my family? I had called them to let them know I was okay. Little kids say the darndest things. My niece said that same day that my legs were so hairy because I have lived with gorillas.
I'm a little different now. I think. Only time can tell. At the end of the trip, I really didn't care how clean I was, how I smelt, what I ate, or even if I did eat - all I knew is that I was happy. I'm not quite sure why. Being out in the wilderness kind of does that to you. When you have a chance to get away from all the distractions of our lives, you aren't as worried by them.
Was I ever afraid? Yes, but only when I had time to be afraid. When the events were happening, I only thought about what the smartest next move would be. I analyzed the speed of the water and my own speed. I was more afraid for others after the flood had come.
But what were we to do? Our path had been flooded. By the time the floods would have reached the others, it would have been too late for us to do anything. We had no equipment, no gear, or anything to help them with. They were three miles from us, and surely, they would receive help from a helicopter by then. We could only try to get some sleep and hope to do as much as we could when the floods had receded, regardless of what that meant.
Since then, I have been a little bit more absent minded. In church today, I started to play an extra verse, when everyone was done singing. I didn't turn to the scriptures being read. I forgot to stand up when it was my turn to stand up.
I don't know if I'll be changed by the experience. I hope I will be for the better. I haven't eaten as much, and I've begun exercising. I haven't been as concerned what others think. I hope not to be selfish. But I am a little distracted.
www.havasupaiflood.com
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Our Story - Compiled by Josh Kaggie
To see the photos, go to http://www.havasupai.com.
Saturday Day
“It was a beautiful and pristine weekend on the Havasupai reservation in Grand Canyon. Saturday I wanted to hike 7-8 miles down to the Colorado River from the campground but couldn’t get anyone in our group to accompany me that far so I settled for Beaver falls about three miles down from Mooney Falls. My first impression of the Waterfalls in Havasupai was the sheer beauty of the turquoise green waters going through the canyon and the travertine formations that sculpted each spectacular waterfall. It was utterly amazing.” - Nathan Cowlishaw
“We hiked to Beaver Falls and absolutely enjoyed it. We played in all of the travertines some of which were really deep. We jumped off of big rocks into the falls and it'd push us out. We spent a good amount of time there. We got back to our camp. The squirrels had eaten pretty much all of my friends' food. Some of the food was strewn up against the mountain walls. It's amazing that they would chew through so much plastic. They sampled pretty much everything we had that was left out.” - Josh Kaggie
The First Warnings
5 PM, Saturday Afternoon
“Some of our group noticed some debris falling off of Mooney Falls.” - Josh Kaggie
“Two Natives came through with walkie-talkies telling us that there was a flood expected to come down the river that evening and to be alert. We asked the man if we were ok where we were and he said we were fine and just be aware.” - Tawnya Gray
5:30 PM, Saturday Afternoon
Mooney Falls, Preflood, Josh Kaggie
“Two natives ran through the campgrounds yelling that the flood waters were coming but didn’t stop to give anyone any specific directions or answers. So, we all pretty much kept doing what we were doing.” - Tawnya Gray
Mooney Falls, During Preflood Warning, Tyler D'Hulst
“Right as we were ready for dinner and eating the food we had left a guy and a girl came running through the camp yelling, 'Flash Flood! Flash Flood! Flash Flood!' Pretty soon the place where there was a cave had a bunch of people on it. Everyone without their gear. Pretty much no one knew how bad a flash flood would be. My group actually stayed on the ground. We didn't move. We packed up though. We put away our tents and tarps and got everything ready to go. But a flood never came. Nothing happened. It was a boy who cries wolf scenario but it's better safe then sorry. A different ranger came through and explained that they might see it rise 6 feet. It was about 5:30 pm at this time, Saturday afternoon.” - Josh Kaggie
6 PM, Saturday Afternoon
“[We started hiking out of the canyon.] It started to rain pretty hard. We pulled out our tarp and hid under a tree next to the trail and covered ourselves. The rain calmed down soon enough, but we kept sitting there. The ranger caught up and made us move along with them. It was their first night as rangers. “ - Josh Kaggie
(Top) Mooney Falls, (Bottom) Havasu River, Next to Campgrounds, Tyler D'Hulst
“The sky remained cloudy on and off the rest of the afternoon but not much rain fell. About 6:00 pm a couple of native Havasupai came through camp letting all the campers know that a flash flood warning had been issued for the area and was in affect until 10:00 pm that night. Even though we were informed of the flood and cautioned to be prepared it was done in a casual manner and felt as if it were more a "heads up" type warning. Some of the campers asked Havasupai and officer what to expect and, from their account, they were informed the river would only rise about two to three feet, if it did at all.” - Tyler D'Hulst
6:30 PM, Saturday Afternoon
“Bureau of Indian Affairs officers came through on a 4-wheeler and said that there was definitely a flood coming. After an hour of watching Havasu Falls, nothing happened. So we figured that was the extent of it and headed back to camp. The water level had risen maybe 6 inches and was still contained in the river banks. We had dinner and played cards with our neighbors.” - Tawnya Gray
Havasu River, Post flood warning, Tyler D'Hulst
“As we were hiking up from Mooney Falls and were told to evacuate the area around Mooney because there was a flash flood warning in effect until ten o’clock. Joe and Robert headed back to camp and I hung around Mooney to shoot a few more images as the waterfall began turning reddish brown. In camp everything was calm that night and we enjoyed an evening with only mild rain.” - Nathan Cowlishaw
The First Flood
8:30 PM, Dusk, Saturday Evening
“We had passed the last fence of the village and were on our way up a hill. I wasn't paying much attention until my other friends stopped. About 6 inches of water was coming down the path. We had to hurry down the path too, because one side was downhill, the other side was blocked by trees. After 20 yards, we were able to cut right and go up hill.
“We found a spot a bit further up the road. It was nice and flat. It had a ton of horse chips that we kicked out of the way. We decided to make camp there and wait for the morning. We hung our packs, a lamp, and our garbage in the trees. We pulled out a tarp and decided to enjoy the night. We made pretty much the remainder of our food - hot cocoa and Mountain House apple crisp.
“Some other hikers came by, saw the flood and talked with us for a moment. They made camp a little bit further uphill, but only for a few moments. They had someone scout ahead and since the bridge was still there and only slightly flooded, they decided to go on ahead. We figured we could wait for morning when the path had dried and the flooding had stopped.
We made camp for the night.” - Josh Kaggie
The Second, Much Deeper Flood
Midnight, Saturday Night
“We were asleep for probably an hour. It was 11:30 Saturday night. I heard some campers walk by on the road. They got down to where the water was and turned around. One of them walked up to us and shined her light in our faces and went, 'No it's not them.' Even with the light in my eyes, I pretended to be asleep because I really just didn't want to move. She then started walking back and said, "You guys do know it's flooded down here, right?" My friend quickly replied, 'Yeah, that's we are camped right here.' We laid there for 30 seconds before Eric said, 'That's a lot louder then it was before.'
“So Bill got up. Right as he ran over to where the path was to check it out, a huge flood of a couple feet came gushing up the trail. We were surrounded on all sides. I walked over there with my socks on. I had left them on so I didn't have to remove moleskin. Our previous camp spot was flooded within minutes of us getting up.” - Josh Kaggie
“Around midnight early Sunday, I woke up to people screaming and a man shaking my tent alerting me of the massive flood. As I emerged from my tent I saw the ravine next to the tent filling with a raging torrent. The evening before it was bone dry. Boulders rolled through it with ease being pushed along with sticks and driftwood. On the other side was Havasu creek. It was completely overwhelmed looking more like a muddy Colorado River. All kinds of debris went rushing by including an outhouse, tents, water toys, cottonwood trees and boulders. The floodwaters completely surrounded the high ground that stranded our group of nineteen people. There were others; a scout troop with six boys and one other couple with their friend. It became a long night as we all waited for morning to swing around. The water kept rising until 4 A.M. and then slowed down. We made a camp fire and everyone huddled around waiting for morning.“ - Nathan Cowlishaw
“Shortly after midnight, I awoke to the sound of raging water outside my tent. I opened the flap and saw John & Aaryn working frantically to get John’s hammock down from the trees and they were standing in calf-deep water. John lost his keen sandals since they had been under his hammock and the tent was washed up against a tree but we were able to wade over and grab it.” - Tawnya Gray
“I was awakened by someone shaking my tent and saying "there's been another flood, get up." I slowly dressed and got out of the tent to check things out. After striking the campsite we wandered down the camp and talked with a few of the other campers. What we saw completely took us by surprise. We came to a point in the camp where the river had overflowed its banks and had washed away peoples tents, gear, and camps. This was about 300-350 feet downstream from our camp.
“At the time the river started to rise even higher, after we had left, these people had to scramble up trees and stand on top of picnic tables and hang on to trees for their lives. They stuck in these trees for over five hours, half in the water and half in the tree. They had lost their shoes and some of the clothes they were wearing. The story from one of them was that a couple of tribe members came to where they were at and helped them crossed. One was told to jump from her position in the tree and extend her arm so that the Indian could catch her. With hesitation she trusted him and leaped into the water (it's speed had increased with the additional rise and was now estimated to be flowing around 35-40 mph) She says that she jumped in and went completely under expect for her right hand, which had been caught by the native there to help her. He pulled her to shore and continued to help others. Others crossed in similar ways.
“Another young man caught in a tree had to actually move to another one because the debris hitting his caused it to start to break. He said that massive trunks would just slam into his tree and knock it around. He also stated that at various times he saw chuck of rock and mud the size of cars just being swept away through the river.” - Tyler D'Hulst
1 AM, Sunday Morning
“The water level finally topped out and maintained its level for over an hour. A group had been separated. Two of them were on our side of the river and the other three were on other side of river. We could hear them shouting to each other but nothing could be done to get to them. We also saw head lamps on the rocks across the wash from us – more people trapped but again, we couldn’t help them.” - Tawnya Gray
“One of the high grounds just down from that was turned into an island with the river raging on both sides of it. You could see people's headlights and flashlights moving around on that island as they scrambled to pack everything up and try to keep it dry. They even built a little campfire on that island for light and warm (with the rising river and increased speed of it, it brought a little chill through the camp). Everyone downstream from that spot and those who had camped on the other side of the river to begin with were immediately cut off from the rest of us, and the way out.
“We hiked up to Havasu falls to see if we could see anything in the dark and you could just hear the increase in power that the water was falling. Looking over a ledge you could also see the river had risen and now spanned the entire length from the canyon wall to that ledge wall.
“We learned of a group of five young adults who had crossed the river from their campsite, just five minutes before the flood, so that they could fill up their water bottles for the night from the spring. When the surge came through it took everything they had. Tents, backpack, clothes, wallets, car keys, cameras, everything was swept downstream.” - Tyler D'Hulst
“We made camp this time on a ledge. It was the flattest cleanest spot we could fine. We were very concerned for our two friends who went on ahead.” - Josh Kaggie
2:15 AM, Sunday Morning
“We figured that we should get some sleep so we found some picnic tables to sleep on. John found an abandoned tent with an inflatable mattress and feather pillows in it so we crawled it. We were SO comfortable…for 10 minutes. Then Benny showed up. Benny was a “professional tour guide who has 20 years of experience in these types of matters” and had appointed himself the leader of the flood victims.” - Tawnya Gray
3:30 AM, Sunday Morning
“About 3:00 am a group of people came by led by a guy named Benny [a private tourguide] and said that they were Rescue One. They informed us that everything seemed to be stable at the time. Unfortunately we had to leave people trapped on the other side. There was nothing we could do to help them. The waters had risen too high and were flowing to fast for anything to be done.
“We moved up to the horse area and then immediately told that we needed to move to even higher ground because the river was still rising. Historically this was the highest ground nearby and has never flooded, that's why the cemetery set there.“ - Tyler D'Hulst
“We were all moved completely out of the campgrounds and up above Havasu Falls to the cemetery. That was the first time we saw a native with a radio that seemed to have any real information at all. At first, we were told it was sacred ground and that we couldn’t go in but had to sleep on the trail in front of it. Suddenly, within minutes, we were ordered into the cemetery because another, larger surge of water was coming. We were told we’d be safe there since it had never flooded. We all spread out and tried to get comfortable but there were over 200 of us in a little clearing in a cemetery, in the dark, in a flood…it wasn’t easy to relax!”
“Aaryn said he could see the trees coming down the river and snapping as they were broken like toothpicks on boulders. John said he estimated that Havasu Falls was at least 10 feet lower than what it used to be because of all the erosion the debris and water were causing.” - Tawnya Gray
4 AM, Sunday Morning
Campgrounds, Day after Dam Broke, Nathan Cowlishaw
“So here we are at the cemetery. Benny circles everyone around him and tries to answer the questions that were being asked. Just listening to the questions and hearing the voices with which they were asked you could sense the fear in some of the people. some of the people were over from Europe of back east and have never experienced this type of thing before, nor grew up knowing what to do in these type of situations. That, coupled with the fear of not being able to see the river at that time and not knowing if it would continue to rise, helped to escalate the tension and fear felt by many of the campers.
“Dad and I were sitting next to the group of five that had been separated from their friends and gear. They had nothing on but swim trunks, short sleeve shirts, and shoes; nothing else. I brought our bags over to them and we gave them our sleeping bags, air pads, a hoodie, two jackets, couple pairs of pants, and some dry clothes so they could at least stay warm.
“There was a constant rumble from the river that sounded like thunder off the canyon walls and you could feel the vibration through the ground. We were probably a good 75 feet away.” - Tyler D'Hulst
5 AM, Dawn, Sunday Morning
“At this time we could see lights from the canyon walls and hilltops nearby. The main trail that campers hike in by was inundated and the two foot bridges that cross the river were blown away by this massive river but there are a couple of trails along the cliffs that the locals used. From there the locals had come down to check out what was going on and to help where needed. They made it all the way to the campground and started helping some people cross the river.
“The water now was at the cemetery edges. We formed a support line up the [canyon] wall to help those campers who would struggle climbing up.
“You could make out the rapids and the level of the river in the dim light. It looked like it had grown five or six times it's original width and height.” - Tyler D'Hulst
“Once we were on the cliff and truly out of the floods path, we could view what had happened. The hiking path that ran along the cemetery was washed away, the two foot bridges crossing the stream were washed away and the “stream” was now a 30 foot wide raging river.” - Tawnya Gray
9 AM, Sunday Morning
“The path out of the canyon was still flooded and the bridge was out. So we walked back to the village in the mud. There was a paper sign on many trees that said, 'Dam breech at 8:85 AM. Tourists will be evacuated. Villagers stay posted.' We were poorly informed of anything in the city. The first helicopter came at close to 9 am. That was the AZ emergency helicopter. I think I may have seen another helicopter.” - Josh Kaggie
Path out of the canyon, 5 hours afters after the flood had hit, Josh Kaggie
“There was a lot of confusion, panic, and uncertainty even in the morning when rescuers hadn’t arrived. It wasn’t until around 9 A.M. that four Havasupai men came to our rescue. By this time we saw a couple of private helicopters arriving on the scene. One of them dropped an old rope on our island. The Havasupai men helped us construct a line across the floodwater about 40 feet long but no-one wanted to cross because of the strong flood current. The first to traverse the line was a guy named Jerry and he barely made it. The rest of us would follow after being warned that another wave of flood water was just minutes away from slamming us. One of the Havasupai men said we had three choices; we could cross the line, climb a tree, or drown in the flood! My buddies ran up some trees but I couldn’t get into a tree and that’s when my survival instinct kicked in. I ran towards the ropes with a pack on. The only thing I was carrying was my flute, my camera, a blanket my mother made me when I was a child, and my 150 dollar cowboy boots. Everything else was lost to the flood. I zipped across the rope line. It was easier than I had expected though I did slip but was able to pull myself to safety with the help and encouragement of the Havasupai men. Two more people had crossed before me and everyone else followed across the line except Joe and Robert - my friends from Parowan, Utah. They were still up in trees on the island!
“The water was beginning to rise and that’s when I began to snap a little. I felt guilty for crossing the line and having my friends still on the other side. It was tear-jerking! It was hard dealing with the uncertainty as to whether they could make it out or not and I couldn’t bear the thought of them dying in the the flood. The others in our group were from Las Vegas and when they saw me, they began shouting in unison for Robert and Joe to come across the line. Not long afterwards they arrived and both crossed to safety. The scouts were still on the island as well but there was an old Havasupai man that was able to find an access route to the island on foot and they were able to bring the scouts across quickly and safely before the next surge of floodwater hit. Everyone on the island made it out alive. I was so overjoyed that my friends made it across safely. We all made it higher ground. We followed the four Havasupai up some steep inclines and a hidden trail that lead back to the village two miles away. By the time we arrived in the village there was FEMA warnings posted on the trees letting everybody know that an earthen dam up the river had failed. We were airlifted in Blackhawk helicopters out of the Canyon.“ - Nathan Cowlishaw
Saturday Day
“It was a beautiful and pristine weekend on the Havasupai reservation in Grand Canyon. Saturday I wanted to hike 7-8 miles down to the Colorado River from the campground but couldn’t get anyone in our group to accompany me that far so I settled for Beaver falls about three miles down from Mooney Falls. My first impression of the Waterfalls in Havasupai was the sheer beauty of the turquoise green waters going through the canyon and the travertine formations that sculpted each spectacular waterfall. It was utterly amazing.” - Nathan Cowlishaw
“We hiked to Beaver Falls and absolutely enjoyed it. We played in all of the travertines some of which were really deep. We jumped off of big rocks into the falls and it'd push us out. We spent a good amount of time there. We got back to our camp. The squirrels had eaten pretty much all of my friends' food. Some of the food was strewn up against the mountain walls. It's amazing that they would chew through so much plastic. They sampled pretty much everything we had that was left out.” - Josh Kaggie
The First Warnings
5 PM, Saturday Afternoon
“Some of our group noticed some debris falling off of Mooney Falls.” - Josh Kaggie
“Two Natives came through with walkie-talkies telling us that there was a flood expected to come down the river that evening and to be alert. We asked the man if we were ok where we were and he said we were fine and just be aware.” - Tawnya Gray
5:30 PM, Saturday Afternoon
Mooney Falls, Preflood, Josh Kaggie
“Two natives ran through the campgrounds yelling that the flood waters were coming but didn’t stop to give anyone any specific directions or answers. So, we all pretty much kept doing what we were doing.” - Tawnya Gray
Mooney Falls, During Preflood Warning, Tyler D'Hulst
“Right as we were ready for dinner and eating the food we had left a guy and a girl came running through the camp yelling, 'Flash Flood! Flash Flood! Flash Flood!' Pretty soon the place where there was a cave had a bunch of people on it. Everyone without their gear. Pretty much no one knew how bad a flash flood would be. My group actually stayed on the ground. We didn't move. We packed up though. We put away our tents and tarps and got everything ready to go. But a flood never came. Nothing happened. It was a boy who cries wolf scenario but it's better safe then sorry. A different ranger came through and explained that they might see it rise 6 feet. It was about 5:30 pm at this time, Saturday afternoon.” - Josh Kaggie
6 PM, Saturday Afternoon
“[We started hiking out of the canyon.] It started to rain pretty hard. We pulled out our tarp and hid under a tree next to the trail and covered ourselves. The rain calmed down soon enough, but we kept sitting there. The ranger caught up and made us move along with them. It was their first night as rangers. “ - Josh Kaggie
(Top) Mooney Falls, (Bottom) Havasu River, Next to Campgrounds, Tyler D'Hulst
“The sky remained cloudy on and off the rest of the afternoon but not much rain fell. About 6:00 pm a couple of native Havasupai came through camp letting all the campers know that a flash flood warning had been issued for the area and was in affect until 10:00 pm that night. Even though we were informed of the flood and cautioned to be prepared it was done in a casual manner and felt as if it were more a "heads up" type warning. Some of the campers asked Havasupai and officer what to expect and, from their account, they were informed the river would only rise about two to three feet, if it did at all.” - Tyler D'Hulst
6:30 PM, Saturday Afternoon
“Bureau of Indian Affairs officers came through on a 4-wheeler and said that there was definitely a flood coming. After an hour of watching Havasu Falls, nothing happened. So we figured that was the extent of it and headed back to camp. The water level had risen maybe 6 inches and was still contained in the river banks. We had dinner and played cards with our neighbors.” - Tawnya Gray
Havasu River, Post flood warning, Tyler D'Hulst
“As we were hiking up from Mooney Falls and were told to evacuate the area around Mooney because there was a flash flood warning in effect until ten o’clock. Joe and Robert headed back to camp and I hung around Mooney to shoot a few more images as the waterfall began turning reddish brown. In camp everything was calm that night and we enjoyed an evening with only mild rain.” - Nathan Cowlishaw
The First Flood
8:30 PM, Dusk, Saturday Evening
“We had passed the last fence of the village and were on our way up a hill. I wasn't paying much attention until my other friends stopped. About 6 inches of water was coming down the path. We had to hurry down the path too, because one side was downhill, the other side was blocked by trees. After 20 yards, we were able to cut right and go up hill.
“We found a spot a bit further up the road. It was nice and flat. It had a ton of horse chips that we kicked out of the way. We decided to make camp there and wait for the morning. We hung our packs, a lamp, and our garbage in the trees. We pulled out a tarp and decided to enjoy the night. We made pretty much the remainder of our food - hot cocoa and Mountain House apple crisp.
“Some other hikers came by, saw the flood and talked with us for a moment. They made camp a little bit further uphill, but only for a few moments. They had someone scout ahead and since the bridge was still there and only slightly flooded, they decided to go on ahead. We figured we could wait for morning when the path had dried and the flooding had stopped.
We made camp for the night.” - Josh Kaggie
The Second, Much Deeper Flood
Midnight, Saturday Night
“We were asleep for probably an hour. It was 11:30 Saturday night. I heard some campers walk by on the road. They got down to where the water was and turned around. One of them walked up to us and shined her light in our faces and went, 'No it's not them.' Even with the light in my eyes, I pretended to be asleep because I really just didn't want to move. She then started walking back and said, "You guys do know it's flooded down here, right?" My friend quickly replied, 'Yeah, that's we are camped right here.' We laid there for 30 seconds before Eric said, 'That's a lot louder then it was before.'
“So Bill got up. Right as he ran over to where the path was to check it out, a huge flood of a couple feet came gushing up the trail. We were surrounded on all sides. I walked over there with my socks on. I had left them on so I didn't have to remove moleskin. Our previous camp spot was flooded within minutes of us getting up.” - Josh Kaggie
“Around midnight early Sunday, I woke up to people screaming and a man shaking my tent alerting me of the massive flood. As I emerged from my tent I saw the ravine next to the tent filling with a raging torrent. The evening before it was bone dry. Boulders rolled through it with ease being pushed along with sticks and driftwood. On the other side was Havasu creek. It was completely overwhelmed looking more like a muddy Colorado River. All kinds of debris went rushing by including an outhouse, tents, water toys, cottonwood trees and boulders. The floodwaters completely surrounded the high ground that stranded our group of nineteen people. There were others; a scout troop with six boys and one other couple with their friend. It became a long night as we all waited for morning to swing around. The water kept rising until 4 A.M. and then slowed down. We made a camp fire and everyone huddled around waiting for morning.“ - Nathan Cowlishaw
“Shortly after midnight, I awoke to the sound of raging water outside my tent. I opened the flap and saw John & Aaryn working frantically to get John’s hammock down from the trees and they were standing in calf-deep water. John lost his keen sandals since they had been under his hammock and the tent was washed up against a tree but we were able to wade over and grab it.” - Tawnya Gray
“I was awakened by someone shaking my tent and saying "there's been another flood, get up." I slowly dressed and got out of the tent to check things out. After striking the campsite we wandered down the camp and talked with a few of the other campers. What we saw completely took us by surprise. We came to a point in the camp where the river had overflowed its banks and had washed away peoples tents, gear, and camps. This was about 300-350 feet downstream from our camp.
“At the time the river started to rise even higher, after we had left, these people had to scramble up trees and stand on top of picnic tables and hang on to trees for their lives. They stuck in these trees for over five hours, half in the water and half in the tree. They had lost their shoes and some of the clothes they were wearing. The story from one of them was that a couple of tribe members came to where they were at and helped them crossed. One was told to jump from her position in the tree and extend her arm so that the Indian could catch her. With hesitation she trusted him and leaped into the water (it's speed had increased with the additional rise and was now estimated to be flowing around 35-40 mph) She says that she jumped in and went completely under expect for her right hand, which had been caught by the native there to help her. He pulled her to shore and continued to help others. Others crossed in similar ways.
“Another young man caught in a tree had to actually move to another one because the debris hitting his caused it to start to break. He said that massive trunks would just slam into his tree and knock it around. He also stated that at various times he saw chuck of rock and mud the size of cars just being swept away through the river.” - Tyler D'Hulst
1 AM, Sunday Morning
“The water level finally topped out and maintained its level for over an hour. A group had been separated. Two of them were on our side of the river and the other three were on other side of river. We could hear them shouting to each other but nothing could be done to get to them. We also saw head lamps on the rocks across the wash from us – more people trapped but again, we couldn’t help them.” - Tawnya Gray
“One of the high grounds just down from that was turned into an island with the river raging on both sides of it. You could see people's headlights and flashlights moving around on that island as they scrambled to pack everything up and try to keep it dry. They even built a little campfire on that island for light and warm (with the rising river and increased speed of it, it brought a little chill through the camp). Everyone downstream from that spot and those who had camped on the other side of the river to begin with were immediately cut off from the rest of us, and the way out.
“We hiked up to Havasu falls to see if we could see anything in the dark and you could just hear the increase in power that the water was falling. Looking over a ledge you could also see the river had risen and now spanned the entire length from the canyon wall to that ledge wall.
“We learned of a group of five young adults who had crossed the river from their campsite, just five minutes before the flood, so that they could fill up their water bottles for the night from the spring. When the surge came through it took everything they had. Tents, backpack, clothes, wallets, car keys, cameras, everything was swept downstream.” - Tyler D'Hulst
“We made camp this time on a ledge. It was the flattest cleanest spot we could fine. We were very concerned for our two friends who went on ahead.” - Josh Kaggie
2:15 AM, Sunday Morning
“We figured that we should get some sleep so we found some picnic tables to sleep on. John found an abandoned tent with an inflatable mattress and feather pillows in it so we crawled it. We were SO comfortable…for 10 minutes. Then Benny showed up. Benny was a “professional tour guide who has 20 years of experience in these types of matters” and had appointed himself the leader of the flood victims.” - Tawnya Gray
3:30 AM, Sunday Morning
“About 3:00 am a group of people came by led by a guy named Benny [a private tourguide] and said that they were Rescue One. They informed us that everything seemed to be stable at the time. Unfortunately we had to leave people trapped on the other side. There was nothing we could do to help them. The waters had risen too high and were flowing to fast for anything to be done.
“We moved up to the horse area and then immediately told that we needed to move to even higher ground because the river was still rising. Historically this was the highest ground nearby and has never flooded, that's why the cemetery set there.“ - Tyler D'Hulst
“We were all moved completely out of the campgrounds and up above Havasu Falls to the cemetery. That was the first time we saw a native with a radio that seemed to have any real information at all. At first, we were told it was sacred ground and that we couldn’t go in but had to sleep on the trail in front of it. Suddenly, within minutes, we were ordered into the cemetery because another, larger surge of water was coming. We were told we’d be safe there since it had never flooded. We all spread out and tried to get comfortable but there were over 200 of us in a little clearing in a cemetery, in the dark, in a flood…it wasn’t easy to relax!”
“Aaryn said he could see the trees coming down the river and snapping as they were broken like toothpicks on boulders. John said he estimated that Havasu Falls was at least 10 feet lower than what it used to be because of all the erosion the debris and water were causing.” - Tawnya Gray
4 AM, Sunday Morning
Campgrounds, Day after Dam Broke, Nathan Cowlishaw
“So here we are at the cemetery. Benny circles everyone around him and tries to answer the questions that were being asked. Just listening to the questions and hearing the voices with which they were asked you could sense the fear in some of the people. some of the people were over from Europe of back east and have never experienced this type of thing before, nor grew up knowing what to do in these type of situations. That, coupled with the fear of not being able to see the river at that time and not knowing if it would continue to rise, helped to escalate the tension and fear felt by many of the campers.
“Dad and I were sitting next to the group of five that had been separated from their friends and gear. They had nothing on but swim trunks, short sleeve shirts, and shoes; nothing else. I brought our bags over to them and we gave them our sleeping bags, air pads, a hoodie, two jackets, couple pairs of pants, and some dry clothes so they could at least stay warm.
“There was a constant rumble from the river that sounded like thunder off the canyon walls and you could feel the vibration through the ground. We were probably a good 75 feet away.” - Tyler D'Hulst
5 AM, Dawn, Sunday Morning
“At this time we could see lights from the canyon walls and hilltops nearby. The main trail that campers hike in by was inundated and the two foot bridges that cross the river were blown away by this massive river but there are a couple of trails along the cliffs that the locals used. From there the locals had come down to check out what was going on and to help where needed. They made it all the way to the campground and started helping some people cross the river.
“The water now was at the cemetery edges. We formed a support line up the [canyon] wall to help those campers who would struggle climbing up.
“You could make out the rapids and the level of the river in the dim light. It looked like it had grown five or six times it's original width and height.” - Tyler D'Hulst
“Once we were on the cliff and truly out of the floods path, we could view what had happened. The hiking path that ran along the cemetery was washed away, the two foot bridges crossing the stream were washed away and the “stream” was now a 30 foot wide raging river.” - Tawnya Gray
9 AM, Sunday Morning
“The path out of the canyon was still flooded and the bridge was out. So we walked back to the village in the mud. There was a paper sign on many trees that said, 'Dam breech at 8:85 AM. Tourists will be evacuated. Villagers stay posted.' We were poorly informed of anything in the city. The first helicopter came at close to 9 am. That was the AZ emergency helicopter. I think I may have seen another helicopter.” - Josh Kaggie
Path out of the canyon, 5 hours afters after the flood had hit, Josh Kaggie
“There was a lot of confusion, panic, and uncertainty even in the morning when rescuers hadn’t arrived. It wasn’t until around 9 A.M. that four Havasupai men came to our rescue. By this time we saw a couple of private helicopters arriving on the scene. One of them dropped an old rope on our island. The Havasupai men helped us construct a line across the floodwater about 40 feet long but no-one wanted to cross because of the strong flood current. The first to traverse the line was a guy named Jerry and he barely made it. The rest of us would follow after being warned that another wave of flood water was just minutes away from slamming us. One of the Havasupai men said we had three choices; we could cross the line, climb a tree, or drown in the flood! My buddies ran up some trees but I couldn’t get into a tree and that’s when my survival instinct kicked in. I ran towards the ropes with a pack on. The only thing I was carrying was my flute, my camera, a blanket my mother made me when I was a child, and my 150 dollar cowboy boots. Everything else was lost to the flood. I zipped across the rope line. It was easier than I had expected though I did slip but was able to pull myself to safety with the help and encouragement of the Havasupai men. Two more people had crossed before me and everyone else followed across the line except Joe and Robert - my friends from Parowan, Utah. They were still up in trees on the island!
“The water was beginning to rise and that’s when I began to snap a little. I felt guilty for crossing the line and having my friends still on the other side. It was tear-jerking! It was hard dealing with the uncertainty as to whether they could make it out or not and I couldn’t bear the thought of them dying in the the flood. The others in our group were from Las Vegas and when they saw me, they began shouting in unison for Robert and Joe to come across the line. Not long afterwards they arrived and both crossed to safety. The scouts were still on the island as well but there was an old Havasupai man that was able to find an access route to the island on foot and they were able to bring the scouts across quickly and safely before the next surge of floodwater hit. Everyone on the island made it out alive. I was so overjoyed that my friends made it across safely. We all made it higher ground. We followed the four Havasupai up some steep inclines and a hidden trail that lead back to the village two miles away. By the time we arrived in the village there was FEMA warnings posted on the trees letting everybody know that an earthen dam up the river had failed. We were airlifted in Blackhawk helicopters out of the Canyon.“ - Nathan Cowlishaw
Friday, August 22, 2008
My Experience at Havasupai
My Group's Story
Beginning writing the night that I got home..
Ah, to be home. It is currently 2:40 AM MST. But I was in the flood at Hava Su Pai. I was airlifted out. I have a lot of stuff that I'm going to forget. And oddly enough, I don't think I can sleep.
I hope to shorten most of this and add a photo-journal later.
It's too late to write. I just got home. I got out of the canyon at about 2pm MST. Then we drove home. For now, I've just contacted various agencies to see what's best to do with those pictures.
Like I said, more after I finish sleeping. I'll eventually add lots of pictures from my previous trips too.
It's 3:52 AM, MST. And I can't sleep. Funny thing is my heart is racing more now then I think it ever did in the canyon. Time to think does that.
The start of our trip
I'll just start at the beginning to try and relax myself so skip ahead when I actually do have the rest of the stories. I drove from Utah with a friend Thursday morning. It's a good 11 to 12 hour drive simply because you have to go around the canyon. We were meeting a couple of friends that I knew from college. In fact, I had invited a lot more and luckily, though not unexpectedly, some that were very committed to go dropped out at near the last minute. I always count on a few people to drop out.
We ate in Peach Springs at the only restaurant in town. There were some people from Europe there and my friend and myself thought they were speaking a language we were fluent in. Apparently we weren't so fluent. They were from Germany instead of Scandinavia which was a little embarassing for us, especially since I started our conversation in Danish.
Hualapi Hilltop was 60 miles away from there. We got there after dark, after being passed by a group of 5-6 cars (and some in that group lost their keys) that were all together. At the Hilltop we met up with friends from other parts of the country. Two from Arizona, one from California, and us two from Utah made five together. We slept fairly well. There's always a lot of mosquitoes at the hilltop but never any in the canyon. We laid a tarp down (and didn't notice some broken glass) but slept pretty good.
Friday morning: We were slow getting started that morning. We debated whether to bring certain gear - like a 70 foot rope. (I wish I had brought my ham radio too.) I brought my cell phone but left it in no-service mode. (I brought it for the time but ended using it later for the numbers.) We decided to bring my Nintendo DS because the wait for the flight out often takes a few hours normally.
When we started up in the morning going down the hilltop, a group of 20 passed us up. I was the slowest one in our group. Not that I was tired or injured, I just take smaller steps. We passed up maybe about 15 people getting to the campground. But everything was nice, dry, and calm. We checked in, bought some ice cream (best $5 spent ever), and headed down to the camp.
Friday afternoon and night: Well, since I'm not in danger of getting kicked out of the canyon now, (you aren't supposed to climb any walls,) our camp was right next to a cave. We climbed up and explored the cave after we made camp. The cave was a good 30 foot scale off of the ground. I set up my tent for a place to change. We made lunch. Then we went into the cave. There was a bunch of sandstone bricks slightly lower then the cave on the ascent up, so it makes me think that the cave was used slightly for mining. We explored the entire cave. There was a nice big room where you could make camp in it if needed (as in, 6 people could sleep comfortably there). There were tons of crystals but many of them had been broken off. A few of us in our group spelunk regularly so we didn't take anything out of it. It had soft ground but a crystal overhang. The bottom of the cave was sand. There was very little ascent or descent in the cave and it only really went back 100 feet. Another passage came out to 20 feet away from the entrance. But nothing significant. We spent the rest of the day swimming in the travertines at Hava Su Falls and just enjoying it. The water was too cold for me that day so I didn't play in it too much. I think half the time we were there we just napped while in the water.
That night it rained. We had two tents among the five of us. We started out among the stars lying on tarps. The rain didn't last very long but it made us move inside of our tents. We woke up very muggy and sweaty.
Generic Map of trail: Hualapi Hilltop - Hava Su Pai - Navajo Falls - Hava Su Falls - Campground - 300 ft climb - Mooney Falls - Beaver Falls - Colorado River
Thursday day we spent enjoying everything there was to enjoy. Our original plan was to hike to the Colorado river. I forget how long it is to get there. But we got a fairly early start. It's almost a ten mile hike if I remember correctly, which I don't. Along the way we had to climb various hills and go through lots of water - pretty standard. There was a rope swing between Mooney and Beaver that we swung on. It had a stick attached to it, but on the way back, it had some bicycle handle bars attached to it to hang on to. There was an emergency bike laying there that could carry someone laying down. It had one wheel on it. I think that's where the group behind us got the handle bars from.
We hiked to Beaver Falls and absolutely enjoyed it. We played in all of the travertines some of which were really deep. We jumped off of big rocks into the falls and it'd push us out. We spent a good amount of time there. There were people jumping in from all sorts of places - something you couldn't do with any of the other falls. One kid was pretty crazy and jumped from about as high as you could get.
We were going to go to the Colorado. We had plenty of food and water. But the two in our group from Arizona were planning on leaving that night for a meeting they had that morning. So we decided to go back and play in Mooney Falls.
The First Warning
Mooney Falls is the tallest (or rather was) of the falls. It's absolutely gorgeous. We used someone's air mattress that they left behind and filled it up to play around it. Everyone in our group got pretty close to the falls itself and scaled the wall a little bit. Some in our group felt some debris fall from above. A couple of us climbed a big rock just right next to the falls and jumped in. You had to be careful though, because there are a lot of big rocks in the water itself fairly close to the falls. But most of it is (was) ok. So we thoroughly enjoyed it. Then we climbed up the 400 foot climb, that has ladders and steps and ropes but is a steep ascent, most of which is within a 50 foot horizontal radius. We got back to camp and started making dinner.
A lot of our food was gone. It had been chewed through by squirrels. The squirrels near there are nasty. Everything that had been left out of a tent was chewed through. They even got into my pack and chewed through the rest of my granola bars and powerade powder and other food I was planning on. They chewed through my friends' food - a lot of it was in a big plastic bag, then in smaller plastic bags. The squirrels (we assume squirrels but there was a wet feather on my metal plate that was left on the table - maybe a combination of both) had eaten pretty much all of my friends' food. Some of the food was strewn up against the mountain walls. It's amazing that they would chew through so much plastic. They sampled pretty much everything we had that was left out. (Last year, one of my friends lost a steak to a dog when we left.)
Right as we were ready for dinner and eating the food we had left a guy and a girl came running through the camp yelling, "Flash Flood! Flash Flood! Flash Flood!" Pretty soon the place where there was a cave had a bunch of people on it. Everyone without their gear. Pretty much no one knew how bad a flash flood would be. My group actually stayed on the ground. We didn't move. We packed up though. We put away our tents and tarps and got everything ready to go. But a flood never came. Nothing happened. It was a boy who cries wolf scenario but it's better safe then sorry. A different ranger came through and explained that they might see it rise 6 feet. It was about 5:30 pm at this time, Saturday afternoon.
Two of our friends decided to hike out of the canyon. They left earlier then us so they could stop at a restaurant in the village and get something to eat. My own friends decided they wanted to leave too, but I was planning on spending an extra day. My pack was packed only to get stuff in quickly, not to hike 10 miles comfortably uphill. Plus, I was still in my swimsuit and it was uncomfortable. So we were a little bit behind. I noticed that the space blanket and bandana that I had brought were missing - I think the squirrels probably took it, but I saw a few space blankets later and really hoped that mine helped someone.
We had moved camp at this point, thinking the other spot would be pretty dumb. Originally we were planning to move into the cave, but some other campers did that after the first flash flood warning and we didn't want to be too crowded. Our second choice was next to Mooney falls, further down the camp. That was still open and was the closest spot to the falls. We were planning on doing that earlier but since the flash flood warning we decided it would be a bad idea. (Oddly enough, the outhouses next to mooney falls were safe the entire night.)
So the other camping spot that was still open, with a table, on high ground, was right next to the outhouses at the entrance to the camp. I think this was one of the major reasons my one friend wanted to hike out earlier.
So we had moved there. After we had moved there, we were curious what the hut was down there. (I was hoping they sold food.) The hut is a ranger station. I started talking with the ranger and his wife there. I told them we had moved to a new campground really close but might be planning on hiking out of the canyon. They said we would be safe there. They said they were about to leave to the village to get some food. They were down there early to warn of flooding.
We decided to hike. I'm not sure how long our friends had been ahead of us. But we spent some time cooking at our smells-like-crap campground, repacked, and I changed. It was probably a half hour to an hour. But then we began our hike out.
The First Flood
It's two miles uphill to the Supai village. The rangers started walking after we left. We hiked and got about a mile before it started to rain pretty hard. We pulled out our tarp and hid under a tree next to the trail and covered ourselves. The rain calmed down soon enough, but we kept sitting there. The ranger caught up and made us move along with them. We chatted with them for a while. It was their first night as rangers. I think they are out of a job now. (The ranger was farsighted and missed our hands trying to shake them when he stopped at a huge bonfire a mile before the village.) They had walkie talkies.
When we had gotten to the village we checked all around and couldn't see our two friends. We had just assumed they had gone on without us so we decided to go on too. We got our flashlights out because it was twilight. We asked a villager what she thought. She said she wouldn't recommend hiking out but wished us luck when we decided to anyway. As we were hiking out, I was actually a little scared and thought to myself that I'd be calm if I were to meet my doom.
We got about a mile outside of the village. There's a pretty big hill just outside the village that you have to climb up and then down. We headed down that, the path levelled off. I was trying to keep up since the two friends with me walked a lot faster and I had a few blisters and watersores (ie. sores you get from sandals when water is being pressed against them) and some other uncomfortableness. But I knew if we delayed it could mean a lot worse things might happen. We wanted to get out of there as fast as possible.
We had passed the last fence of the village and were on our way up a hill. I wasn't paying much attention until my other friends stopped. About 6 inches of water was coming down (at the head of the water). I say it was going down just a little faster then I can walk (because I kept just ahead of it) but my other friend says it was going faster then that. We walked downhill to start because the trail uphilled really soon. Only one of us got wet. We were booking it uphill but the water diverged off to a different path. The path out of the canyon was blocked by water. It was possible to cross but who wants to hike 8 miles in wet, muddy boots? Especially when there's further chance of flash floods?
We found a spot a bit further up the road. It was nice and flat. It had a ton of horse chips that we kicked out of the way. We decided to make camp there and wait for the morning. We hung our packs, a lamp, and our garbage in the trees. We pulled out a tarp and decided to enjoy the night. We made pretty much the remainder of our food - hot cocoa and Mountain House apple crisp.
Some other hikers came by, saw the flood and talked with us for a moment. They made camp a little bit further uphill, but only for a few moments. They had someone scout ahead and since the bridge was still there and only slightly flooded, they decided to go on ahead. We figured we could wait for morning when the path had dried and the flooding had stopped.
We pulled out our sleeping bags and got in them. We talked for a while. Between us, we have a lawyer, physicist, and emergency coordinator so we talked quite a bit of philosophy and such.
The Second Flood - The Real Disaster
We were asleep for probably an hour. It was 11:30 Saturday night. I heard some campers walk by on the road. They got down to where the water was and turned around. One of them walked up to us and shined her light in our faces and went, "No it's not them." Even with the light in my eyes, I pretended to be asleep because I really just didn't want to move. She then started walking back and said, "You guys do know it's flooded down here, right?" My friend quickly replied, "Yeah, that's we are camped right here." We laid there for 30 seconds before one of us said, "That's a lot louder then it was before."
So one of my friends got up. Right as he ran over to where the path was to check it out, a huge flood of a couple feet came gushing up the trail. We were surrounded on all sides. I walked over there with my socks on (I left them on so I didn't have to remove moleskin. I put a fresh pair on after the hike. The one thing I did plan on and bring was 6 pairs of socks.) Someone on the other side who was hurrying up the trail yelled, "Are you ok?" And I went, "Ummm... yeah..." really slowly and melancholily. (I know it isn't a word.)
We cut down our packs (which we had hung up in a tree) and left the light on still hanging in a tree. I just grabbed up a tarp with two sleeping bags in it, my pack on my back, and my shoes and went to the flooded trail. My two other friends were still in swimsuits. One of them had hiked the way in his nice water shoes. My other friend was barefoot. I had my socks on. And we went through the water. By the time I crossed (two of us were trying to get the lamp down and decided it was futile) it was up past my knees and my shorts got wet. I had partly damp shorts all night, but it was nothing compared to the sweat from the humidity.
We had actually scouted the other side of the river. We always had an escape plan before we made any camp on the trip. When the first flood came that night, we had gone uphill this way as soon as we could. We didn't want to be downstream from their irrigation system. The problem with this side of the river is that it had a lot of cacti and was steep. There really wasn't any place with a lot of room. There was a place to lay a sleeping bag or two (under normal, standard comfortable circumstances) higher up and through a lot of cacti. I actually went barefoot (sockfoot) because I didn't want to take my socks off and put my shoes on yet. Plus I was debating whether to cross again to get my lamp.
We walked through a number of catcus patches. We found a good spot a good 50 feet higher then our previous camping spot. We made a couple of trips bringing our stuff up there. Oddly enough, my friend with boots on got a cactus prick in him, while I did not. (Though I realized in the morning that I had slept next to a cactus the entire night. Good thing I didn't roll over much.)
When I went to decide whether to get my light (it was still on across the river) our previous camp spot had been flooded. It was flooded within minutes of us getting up.
We made camp this time on almost a ledge. It was the flatest cleanest spot we could fine. Our gear was still dry, other then the tarps and clothing below the upper part of the kneecap. We had a huge boulder just below us that we could walk on and see everything. The waters had filled as far as we could see. My flashlight went as far we could see which was to trees on the opposite side of the floods. We couldn't tell how much further it was.
One of my friends claimed that he heard screaming. We were very concerned for our two friends who went on ahead, but we had a feeling that they were alright. It was almost midnight and they should have made it out of the canyon by then, though they would have cut it pretty close. We talked about how this flood would kill people.
We talked about how it probably wouldn't be on the news. There are plenty of people killed by flash floods every year in slot canyons, and we had a slot canyon coming down. How often does one hear of someone being killed in a slot canyon? Not too often. We talked about Noah's flood which was an interesting conversation. One of my friends claimed that he heard screaming. I could hear it too, but I could never tell whether it was river noises, screaming, or dogs barking because canyons do a funny thing with sounds and distances especially when there are a lot of sounds.
I got the spot nearest to a ledge. Our camping spot was pretty slanted as it was but there was a bigger slant where I was at. We started trying to sleep parallel to the edges of the tarp, but I had too much ledge to even go to sleep. We turned our sleeping bags parallel to the diagonals of the tarp. The tarp kind of fit perfectly between the side of the mountain and the huge boulder and tree at our feet. This diagonal position allowed me to kind of stand up against a rock the entire night. I put my feet on a conveniently situated rock that wasn't going to move and left them there most of the night. I would roll onto one of my sides occasionally with a little bit of finesse. We woke up to find a dead cactus right next to my bag on that side. Funny how little you notice some things..
I had trouble going to sleep. The other guys fell asleep easy. There were a lot of noises during the night. I think they were horses since plenty of them tended to run free in the village. I finally fell asleep when an hour later a helicopter flew down the canyon. He then flew back up the canyon just a few minutes later. I assume he was a scout.
I woke up nice and early. Pretty much when the sun came up ~5am. I walked on the boulder and noticed that everything was still flooded. The path out of the canyon was gone, even though it was morning.
The white light in this picture is where my lamp was hanging. That's where we made our initial flood camp. The flood in the foreground is what we had to cross, though it was a lot higher. (The sand seems to have brought in a lot of sand.) My lamp was muddy on the bottom. But it was still shining. The other side of the lamp is the flooded valley that was still flooded when we left.
I went for a walk and tried not to wake the other guys. I couldn't see our previous camp until I had hiked around a little bit and I saw some horses and was trying to get a good picture. They were very curious about my lamp. I ended up only scaring them away revealing a bull. So I went back up to our camp.
I had to poo. And I'm a very curious person. So I ended up wandering up the trail in a little bit and found a spot. There was plenty of dry trail to the village along the side of the road, along the irrigation ditch for a while. The water tapered off eventually from the trail.
The First Day of Aftermath
When we all got up we hiked back to the city. At the top of the first tall hill out of the city were the other campers who had awaken us that night and about 3 horses. I'm not sure how they all fit during the night. (I doubt the horses were there at night.) The path to the city was muddy most of the way, until close a few hundred yards away from the main road. It made us curious how the houses that were a lot lower fared.
In town we met a few of the other villagers. There was a paper sign on many trees that said, "Dam breech at 8:85 AM. Tourists will be evacuated. Villagers stay posted." And there was a rumor around that it would take 4 - 6 hours for the water to get there. Most of us thought that another flood was coming, but after a while we didn't think it would get up to that part of the village. It wasn't until my drive home that I realized it should've been, "Dam breeched at 8:45 PM." That would've made a world of difference.
There was one guy there that was a professional tour guide. He had a lot of people with him. His group had about 5-10 large blue tents at the camp site when we were down there. After the first flash flood warning, I believe he went around and assigned every person in the camp a number. A few people got annoyed by it but it did help a little bit in trying to get an estimate of how many people were down there.
The emergency coordinator in our group volunteered to help with the efforts. Basically, he ended up going around trying to get people on a list to try and get a head count. And if a person had a number assigned by the tour guide, he would try and get that too. Since we had some other climbing and other experience, we were prepared for a lot of other things.
The tribal member who was a FEMA coordinator was in charge of organizing all of us. He asked if any of us (who were prepared to rescue others) had any equipment with us like rope. He told us, "We may have to get your rope from your car."
My friend suggested that we find out who has any other experience in the crowd so he sent my other friend and me through the crowds asking who had experience in emergency, rock climbing, CPR, etc. We didn't need to use that list, but if it had come down to it, we did not have a doctor or nurse in the city (who wasn't a camper) that night. We did get a good list - we had some people who have rock climbed, been nurses, and a volunteer fireman.
The number count off worked decently well. It went up to 120 people. My friends and myself helped put everything in order and figured how approximately how many people were missing. By the time the last flight came to the city, about 13 people were missing from the number count off. There are a lot of other records and since people are free to go when they please, it is hard to know who was really there or wasn't.
We were poorly informed of anything in the city. The first helicopter came at close to 9 am. That was the AZ emergency helicopter. I think I may have seen another helicopter. They basically ended up flying down to where people were stranded and took them either to the city or the hilltop, kind of based on how they were rescued or their condition. I only know the stories of the people who were taken to the village.
And most of the time, we waited.
All of the travel to the campground was by helicopter - no one took any of their vehicles for a variety of reasons - speed and the roads were crumbling.
Everyone's Stories
Over the next few hours and days we would hear stories of other people. The professional tour guide ended up gathering a lot of people after the first flood and taking them almost to the city. He also went down that morning and helped rescue a few people, since one of the bridges were out and they needed to cross it.
There was another group that ended up getting to the city by hiking a long way around the mountains - they were apparently on the right side of the river and close to a ledge you could climb up to the mountains to.
Some had to cross a washed out bridge coming to the city I belive through use of human rope.
There was a group of scouts that were stranded on an island. They were rescued by making a rope bridge. One rope strung up high to hold onto, one down low to stand on. And they climbed one by one across the flooded waters.
This one I heard second hand so I'm unsure how a couple things of it played out: One girl climbed up a tree when the first flood came. When the second flood came she was holding on to dear life. Her hands held on upstream while her back was downstream. Then a big torrent came and swept her up and around the tree so that her back was to the oncoming water. She was pressed against the tree. She was constantly battered. She was rescued basically by being asked to jump in the water. So she did. Nothing but her hand was above water but the tribal members caught her. She was among those of us who left the second day.
One group who was rescued early had lost all their packs and gear. They were among those to leave the second day too. We offered a couple of them breakfast but I'm not sure who ended up giving them food because food in the city still cost money, and they had lost everything other then the shirt on their backs.
Plenty had been awaken while still in their tents. Others had been awaken because they heard a twig snap or had to pee. Some of those woke up to 30 other people. The guys who were in their tents didn't notice that the water was there surrounding them. When they had stepped outside of their tents (one guy had to pee) they noticed that the water was pretty high. They had in their group one guy on an air mattress who had started floating away. They tried waking him up a couple times but he thought they were joking with him. He woke up soon enough though. Most of these people found high ground soon enough. The waters subsided enough by the morning to land a helicopter in some places.
I forget which story it was but I know as soon as one group left their island - I think they were on tables - shortly after huge trees came.
Most of these people lost tents and other gear. I don't know how many kept their keys or wallets with them. There was one tent that had two large trees pushed up right next to it. The two trees created a 'V' shape and created a natural dam. That tent was safe the entire night, even being deep in what should've been water. The tents right next to it disappeared though.
I haven't watched any news about it - I was in the canyon afterall and have only been home part of a day. I'm pretty sure the news stories have died down a bit. So I'm not sure what other stories there were coming out of the canyon.
So people were being rescued. The tally went up. And a lot of us kept wondering when people would actually start being taken out. They did say they were going to evacuate the village because of the flood.
Some people found access to the internet and checked stories. Plenty of them were incorrect. For example, one said that there was a Red Cross Tent with us. There was no Red Cross Tent. There was no food, other then what you bought. (I found out later that food was given out at the store Sunday night. I wish we had known that! That just tells you how little we were told.) Shelter was a single emergency blanket if you lost your bag. No one volunteered to stay another day. It was force fed to those who didn't get in line fast enough - many of whom should have left the first day had an extra nights stay, while people who had been perfectly fine or stayed in a lodge got out earlier. It was the dumb luck of the draw. I wonder if we had been told that they wouldn't be flying more people out more then a few moments in advance if we would've figured out on our own who should go first.
One news story said that everyone would get $500 for their nights stay. That was incorrect. Including everyone at once, we got $500 total in goods. The store gave out gatorade, coffee, and danishes Monday morning.
There really wasn't an inventory of that point of anyone who might have had any emergencies or needs, such as a diabetic or flood injuries.
The First Flight Out
Two apache helicopters were there at 2 PM Sunday afternoon and finally started taking people out. Up until that time I had started playing cards with some people from the East Coast. (I was very glad that I brought my DS and playing cards along the trip.) I had talked with a lot of people who had stayed at the lodge who had a perfectly good nights rest and didn't know anything went wrong until they left their room that morning.
The had us move from the standard landing pad to further down the road so they could fit two Apache helicopters. It moved really slow. I think they took out a group of eight per helicopter, which seemed to return every half hour. There were a officers from city, county, state, and the national guard was flying the helicopters. The next day there were others from DPS, NPS, and then we had the FEMA guy. That's already 7 different agencies with different flight and emergency protocols sovereign land in a place districted by everyone. I'm pretty sure everyone was confused. It wasn't until Monday that we had someone who actually was in charge. Part of the slowness could've been because it was a Sunday. The other was interdepartmental. The other part was they had to rescue others first.
Whenever a helicopter would land it would blow up a lot of crap, since the ground before had plenty of broken up horse manure. Everyone would look away or cover their faces.
The Destruction We Saw
My group realized it would be a while, so we went down the trail to check out the destruction. We met a native along the way. And he showed us around. He showed us his house and how he had a laundry machine now that he didn't have before. (There was one house that you could see flying back that was completely destroyed.)
He showed us bridges. And we went down the trail.
Hava Su Pai will never be the same again. There is a trail to Hava Su Falls but it is incredibly treacherous. A wrong step would be a 50 foot fall at least. Navajo Falls is completely gone. All the green lushness is gone. With all the trees that had been washed downstream, I bet the travertines that take hundreds of years to form are gone. I don't know if the waters or the land will be blue green again for at least a year. At the least, it will be a long time without tourism and a lot of hard work for these people.
Many people were probably very upset with the Hava Su people. Perhaps rightfully so. I feel incredibly sorry for them. Each villager we talked to had a different opinion of what the flood was and said stuff like, "Yeah, we had a flood like this in 2006, then in 2001." At that point, I'm not sure if they had seen the destruction. It will create new falls. But they will have to work hard to make it safe, to create new paths, and it will be a long time before they get tourists again.
Perhaps, they had seen this big of a flood in 1993. I would put money that this is bigger. It's hard to say because those records don't tell which buildings and which cliffs they scrambled up to for safety. Because I think we saw buildings destroyed too, and maybe not villagers, but tourists, scrambled up cliffs for safety. I do not know if they have ever endured two dam breakings. (Two dams as far as I understand. The Redmond and the cattle/crop dam.) That could be worse then their flood of the early '90s.
Even if it wasn't worse, it caused enough damage that much of it will never be restored. The village is not in any real danger. It exists in a fairly wide valley where most of the water will spread out evenly.
Navajo Falls is no more. The path around Navajo Falls doesn't exist. Much of that land simply fell. I'm sure that the little remaining will fall with just a little bit of pressure. It's sand holding up sand. The path is sand. It doesn't take much to create an avalanche.
Perhaps I'm blowing things out of proportion. I might be wrong. I'm pretty sure I'm right. Some people will be very surprised when Hava Su doesn't open for a while.
I don't know how long it will take for the new falls to become beautiful again. It will take at least a year for vegetation and repairs. Vegetation should help make it more stable.
You may wonder, why are there still great pictures of Mooney Falls and Hava Su Falls? It doesn't look like they have been affected much. Some people claim they've seen more flooding then what they saw in those videos. The answer is simple, that is about 5 times less flooding then occurred the night before. Mooney and Havasu Falls are rock. Navajo Falls is sand. The trail to the campground from navajo falls extended out at least another good 40 feet and that is all gone.
Havasupai will never ever be the same.
The Path Out of the Canyon was Flooded
We got back, waited for a little bit, then went on another hike. We didn't want to lose our spot as last in line so we had to leave. That and sitting in the same spot for most of the day isn't fun. Our next hike was to where we had camped the night before. I was curious if it was still flooded. It was. The bridge was out further up. I guess you could try and trudge through it. It would have been quicker then waiting for the helicopters. But there wasn't really any way out at that time.
Fifty villagers were sent to the hilltop, then they took a few others out. Then they announced that they wouldn't be flying anyone else out that night. Flights would resume at daybreak.
Most people headed back to the main plaza where they handed out emergency blankets for anyone who needed them. They opened up the community center for toilets. Rooms were available for $40 for whoever wanted to rent them. The charge is normally $145 per room. Most others spent the night on ant infested grass and cement. But perhaps ants don't come out at night. The lights were on for a while and I think when they went off, a big cheer was heard from everyone.
As for my party, we found another place to sleep. There were plenty of other dark and grassy spots. I personally would have preferred where I slept the night before compared to the hard concrete of the basketball court.
As we were walking, a villager invited us to join him for some television. We watched a small part of the Olympics. I fell asleep and started snoring.
Early the next morning, people were up and already in line for the helicopters by 4 am. The sun came up at 5am, which is when I woke up. I joined the line fairly quickly but we ended up being a lot later in the line, pretty much last at one point because most everyone saved a spot for someone else.
But the people who stayed at the lodge were the last ones out.
Coffee and danishes were free for everyone. Then eventually gatorade. (After I had bought some. I felt bad for the tribe so I gave a decent tip to the store owner. Funny thing about that - one guy said he would never give another cent to the tribe the day before but then ended up paying for a room.)
The helicopters arrived at 9am. At about 10:30ish other helicopters started arriving. We only had one blackhawk this time (I saw 3 the day before). But it was 10 times more efficient then the other day. We had I think 7 helicopters from many different agencies. Arizona State Rescue, National Park Services, National Guard, etc. The private charter kept bringing people in without taking anyone out. I think there were some people the day before who paid for the charter to take them out. And there was finally someone who took charge, who yelled what was going on to everyone. That's what we really missed the day before.
We had one guy there from DPS who was there volunteering on his day off. And a lot more people went on hikes that day, though we ended up having less time.
The funny thing about it is if the Hava Su nation was a US company, they would have done a lot of things different. Like not even letting us take a chance to get out of the canyon.
Since no one died, I don't think anyone can really sue for the time spent there or the lack of warning.
I really enjoyed the trip. I thought it was absolutely fascinating how the tribe and the campers responded to different situations. I really enjoyed watching the flash flood. Everyone on the ledgers was accounted for. (255 campers.) Their site says the tentative schedule to reopen is in 4 weeks. I'm betting it will be a lot longer then that.
I do have a little bit of bitterness. I actually wasn't bitter until my drive home. A long drive like that lets you have time to think. If I were in charge of the tribe, I'd probably have a lot different protocols and standards.
I wore the same clothes without changing anything or washing anything for a few days. Next time, I bring only one pair of clothes. And a ham radio. That would've made all the difference in the world. What a great last trip of the summer.
www.havasupaiflood.com
Beginning writing the night that I got home..
Ah, to be home. It is currently 2:40 AM MST. But I was in the flood at Hava Su Pai. I was airlifted out. I have a lot of stuff that I'm going to forget. And oddly enough, I don't think I can sleep.
I hope to shorten most of this and add a photo-journal later.
It's too late to write. I just got home. I got out of the canyon at about 2pm MST. Then we drove home. For now, I've just contacted various agencies to see what's best to do with those pictures.
Like I said, more after I finish sleeping. I'll eventually add lots of pictures from my previous trips too.
It's 3:52 AM, MST. And I can't sleep. Funny thing is my heart is racing more now then I think it ever did in the canyon. Time to think does that.
The start of our trip
I'll just start at the beginning to try and relax myself so skip ahead when I actually do have the rest of the stories. I drove from Utah with a friend Thursday morning. It's a good 11 to 12 hour drive simply because you have to go around the canyon. We were meeting a couple of friends that I knew from college. In fact, I had invited a lot more and luckily, though not unexpectedly, some that were very committed to go dropped out at near the last minute. I always count on a few people to drop out.
We ate in Peach Springs at the only restaurant in town. There were some people from Europe there and my friend and myself thought they were speaking a language we were fluent in. Apparently we weren't so fluent. They were from Germany instead of Scandinavia which was a little embarassing for us, especially since I started our conversation in Danish.
Hualapi Hilltop was 60 miles away from there. We got there after dark, after being passed by a group of 5-6 cars (and some in that group lost their keys) that were all together. At the Hilltop we met up with friends from other parts of the country. Two from Arizona, one from California, and us two from Utah made five together. We slept fairly well. There's always a lot of mosquitoes at the hilltop but never any in the canyon. We laid a tarp down (and didn't notice some broken glass) but slept pretty good.
Friday morning: We were slow getting started that morning. We debated whether to bring certain gear - like a 70 foot rope. (I wish I had brought my ham radio too.) I brought my cell phone but left it in no-service mode. (I brought it for the time but ended using it later for the numbers.) We decided to bring my Nintendo DS because the wait for the flight out often takes a few hours normally.
When we started up in the morning going down the hilltop, a group of 20 passed us up. I was the slowest one in our group. Not that I was tired or injured, I just take smaller steps. We passed up maybe about 15 people getting to the campground. But everything was nice, dry, and calm. We checked in, bought some ice cream (best $5 spent ever), and headed down to the camp.
Friday afternoon and night: Well, since I'm not in danger of getting kicked out of the canyon now, (you aren't supposed to climb any walls,) our camp was right next to a cave. We climbed up and explored the cave after we made camp. The cave was a good 30 foot scale off of the ground. I set up my tent for a place to change. We made lunch. Then we went into the cave. There was a bunch of sandstone bricks slightly lower then the cave on the ascent up, so it makes me think that the cave was used slightly for mining. We explored the entire cave. There was a nice big room where you could make camp in it if needed (as in, 6 people could sleep comfortably there). There were tons of crystals but many of them had been broken off. A few of us in our group spelunk regularly so we didn't take anything out of it. It had soft ground but a crystal overhang. The bottom of the cave was sand. There was very little ascent or descent in the cave and it only really went back 100 feet. Another passage came out to 20 feet away from the entrance. But nothing significant. We spent the rest of the day swimming in the travertines at Hava Su Falls and just enjoying it. The water was too cold for me that day so I didn't play in it too much. I think half the time we were there we just napped while in the water.
That night it rained. We had two tents among the five of us. We started out among the stars lying on tarps. The rain didn't last very long but it made us move inside of our tents. We woke up very muggy and sweaty.
Generic Map of trail: Hualapi Hilltop - Hava Su Pai - Navajo Falls - Hava Su Falls - Campground - 300 ft climb - Mooney Falls - Beaver Falls - Colorado River
Thursday day we spent enjoying everything there was to enjoy. Our original plan was to hike to the Colorado river. I forget how long it is to get there. But we got a fairly early start. It's almost a ten mile hike if I remember correctly, which I don't. Along the way we had to climb various hills and go through lots of water - pretty standard. There was a rope swing between Mooney and Beaver that we swung on. It had a stick attached to it, but on the way back, it had some bicycle handle bars attached to it to hang on to. There was an emergency bike laying there that could carry someone laying down. It had one wheel on it. I think that's where the group behind us got the handle bars from.
We hiked to Beaver Falls and absolutely enjoyed it. We played in all of the travertines some of which were really deep. We jumped off of big rocks into the falls and it'd push us out. We spent a good amount of time there. There were people jumping in from all sorts of places - something you couldn't do with any of the other falls. One kid was pretty crazy and jumped from about as high as you could get.
We were going to go to the Colorado. We had plenty of food and water. But the two in our group from Arizona were planning on leaving that night for a meeting they had that morning. So we decided to go back and play in Mooney Falls.
The First Warning
Mooney Falls is the tallest (or rather was) of the falls. It's absolutely gorgeous. We used someone's air mattress that they left behind and filled it up to play around it. Everyone in our group got pretty close to the falls itself and scaled the wall a little bit. Some in our group felt some debris fall from above. A couple of us climbed a big rock just right next to the falls and jumped in. You had to be careful though, because there are a lot of big rocks in the water itself fairly close to the falls. But most of it is (was) ok. So we thoroughly enjoyed it. Then we climbed up the 400 foot climb, that has ladders and steps and ropes but is a steep ascent, most of which is within a 50 foot horizontal radius. We got back to camp and started making dinner.
A lot of our food was gone. It had been chewed through by squirrels. The squirrels near there are nasty. Everything that had been left out of a tent was chewed through. They even got into my pack and chewed through the rest of my granola bars and powerade powder and other food I was planning on. They chewed through my friends' food - a lot of it was in a big plastic bag, then in smaller plastic bags. The squirrels (we assume squirrels but there was a wet feather on my metal plate that was left on the table - maybe a combination of both) had eaten pretty much all of my friends' food. Some of the food was strewn up against the mountain walls. It's amazing that they would chew through so much plastic. They sampled pretty much everything we had that was left out. (Last year, one of my friends lost a steak to a dog when we left.)
Right as we were ready for dinner and eating the food we had left a guy and a girl came running through the camp yelling, "Flash Flood! Flash Flood! Flash Flood!" Pretty soon the place where there was a cave had a bunch of people on it. Everyone without their gear. Pretty much no one knew how bad a flash flood would be. My group actually stayed on the ground. We didn't move. We packed up though. We put away our tents and tarps and got everything ready to go. But a flood never came. Nothing happened. It was a boy who cries wolf scenario but it's better safe then sorry. A different ranger came through and explained that they might see it rise 6 feet. It was about 5:30 pm at this time, Saturday afternoon.
Two of our friends decided to hike out of the canyon. They left earlier then us so they could stop at a restaurant in the village and get something to eat. My own friends decided they wanted to leave too, but I was planning on spending an extra day. My pack was packed only to get stuff in quickly, not to hike 10 miles comfortably uphill. Plus, I was still in my swimsuit and it was uncomfortable. So we were a little bit behind. I noticed that the space blanket and bandana that I had brought were missing - I think the squirrels probably took it, but I saw a few space blankets later and really hoped that mine helped someone.
We had moved camp at this point, thinking the other spot would be pretty dumb. Originally we were planning to move into the cave, but some other campers did that after the first flash flood warning and we didn't want to be too crowded. Our second choice was next to Mooney falls, further down the camp. That was still open and was the closest spot to the falls. We were planning on doing that earlier but since the flash flood warning we decided it would be a bad idea. (Oddly enough, the outhouses next to mooney falls were safe the entire night.)
So the other camping spot that was still open, with a table, on high ground, was right next to the outhouses at the entrance to the camp. I think this was one of the major reasons my one friend wanted to hike out earlier.
So we had moved there. After we had moved there, we were curious what the hut was down there. (I was hoping they sold food.) The hut is a ranger station. I started talking with the ranger and his wife there. I told them we had moved to a new campground really close but might be planning on hiking out of the canyon. They said we would be safe there. They said they were about to leave to the village to get some food. They were down there early to warn of flooding.
We decided to hike. I'm not sure how long our friends had been ahead of us. But we spent some time cooking at our smells-like-crap campground, repacked, and I changed. It was probably a half hour to an hour. But then we began our hike out.
The First Flood
It's two miles uphill to the Supai village. The rangers started walking after we left. We hiked and got about a mile before it started to rain pretty hard. We pulled out our tarp and hid under a tree next to the trail and covered ourselves. The rain calmed down soon enough, but we kept sitting there. The ranger caught up and made us move along with them. We chatted with them for a while. It was their first night as rangers. I think they are out of a job now. (The ranger was farsighted and missed our hands trying to shake them when he stopped at a huge bonfire a mile before the village.) They had walkie talkies.
When we had gotten to the village we checked all around and couldn't see our two friends. We had just assumed they had gone on without us so we decided to go on too. We got our flashlights out because it was twilight. We asked a villager what she thought. She said she wouldn't recommend hiking out but wished us luck when we decided to anyway. As we were hiking out, I was actually a little scared and thought to myself that I'd be calm if I were to meet my doom.
We got about a mile outside of the village. There's a pretty big hill just outside the village that you have to climb up and then down. We headed down that, the path levelled off. I was trying to keep up since the two friends with me walked a lot faster and I had a few blisters and watersores (ie. sores you get from sandals when water is being pressed against them) and some other uncomfortableness. But I knew if we delayed it could mean a lot worse things might happen. We wanted to get out of there as fast as possible.
We had passed the last fence of the village and were on our way up a hill. I wasn't paying much attention until my other friends stopped. About 6 inches of water was coming down (at the head of the water). I say it was going down just a little faster then I can walk (because I kept just ahead of it) but my other friend says it was going faster then that. We walked downhill to start because the trail uphilled really soon. Only one of us got wet. We were booking it uphill but the water diverged off to a different path. The path out of the canyon was blocked by water. It was possible to cross but who wants to hike 8 miles in wet, muddy boots? Especially when there's further chance of flash floods?
We found a spot a bit further up the road. It was nice and flat. It had a ton of horse chips that we kicked out of the way. We decided to make camp there and wait for the morning. We hung our packs, a lamp, and our garbage in the trees. We pulled out a tarp and decided to enjoy the night. We made pretty much the remainder of our food - hot cocoa and Mountain House apple crisp.
Some other hikers came by, saw the flood and talked with us for a moment. They made camp a little bit further uphill, but only for a few moments. They had someone scout ahead and since the bridge was still there and only slightly flooded, they decided to go on ahead. We figured we could wait for morning when the path had dried and the flooding had stopped.
We pulled out our sleeping bags and got in them. We talked for a while. Between us, we have a lawyer, physicist, and emergency coordinator so we talked quite a bit of philosophy and such.
The Second Flood - The Real Disaster
We were asleep for probably an hour. It was 11:30 Saturday night. I heard some campers walk by on the road. They got down to where the water was and turned around. One of them walked up to us and shined her light in our faces and went, "No it's not them." Even with the light in my eyes, I pretended to be asleep because I really just didn't want to move. She then started walking back and said, "You guys do know it's flooded down here, right?" My friend quickly replied, "Yeah, that's we are camped right here." We laid there for 30 seconds before one of us said, "That's a lot louder then it was before."
So one of my friends got up. Right as he ran over to where the path was to check it out, a huge flood of a couple feet came gushing up the trail. We were surrounded on all sides. I walked over there with my socks on (I left them on so I didn't have to remove moleskin. I put a fresh pair on after the hike. The one thing I did plan on and bring was 6 pairs of socks.) Someone on the other side who was hurrying up the trail yelled, "Are you ok?" And I went, "Ummm... yeah..." really slowly and melancholily. (I know it isn't a word.)
We cut down our packs (which we had hung up in a tree) and left the light on still hanging in a tree. I just grabbed up a tarp with two sleeping bags in it, my pack on my back, and my shoes and went to the flooded trail. My two other friends were still in swimsuits. One of them had hiked the way in his nice water shoes. My other friend was barefoot. I had my socks on. And we went through the water. By the time I crossed (two of us were trying to get the lamp down and decided it was futile) it was up past my knees and my shorts got wet. I had partly damp shorts all night, but it was nothing compared to the sweat from the humidity.
We had actually scouted the other side of the river. We always had an escape plan before we made any camp on the trip. When the first flood came that night, we had gone uphill this way as soon as we could. We didn't want to be downstream from their irrigation system. The problem with this side of the river is that it had a lot of cacti and was steep. There really wasn't any place with a lot of room. There was a place to lay a sleeping bag or two (under normal, standard comfortable circumstances) higher up and through a lot of cacti. I actually went barefoot (sockfoot) because I didn't want to take my socks off and put my shoes on yet. Plus I was debating whether to cross again to get my lamp.
We walked through a number of catcus patches. We found a good spot a good 50 feet higher then our previous camping spot. We made a couple of trips bringing our stuff up there. Oddly enough, my friend with boots on got a cactus prick in him, while I did not. (Though I realized in the morning that I had slept next to a cactus the entire night. Good thing I didn't roll over much.)
When I went to decide whether to get my light (it was still on across the river) our previous camp spot had been flooded. It was flooded within minutes of us getting up.
We made camp this time on almost a ledge. It was the flatest cleanest spot we could fine. Our gear was still dry, other then the tarps and clothing below the upper part of the kneecap. We had a huge boulder just below us that we could walk on and see everything. The waters had filled as far as we could see. My flashlight went as far we could see which was to trees on the opposite side of the floods. We couldn't tell how much further it was.
One of my friends claimed that he heard screaming. We were very concerned for our two friends who went on ahead, but we had a feeling that they were alright. It was almost midnight and they should have made it out of the canyon by then, though they would have cut it pretty close. We talked about how this flood would kill people.
We talked about how it probably wouldn't be on the news. There are plenty of people killed by flash floods every year in slot canyons, and we had a slot canyon coming down. How often does one hear of someone being killed in a slot canyon? Not too often. We talked about Noah's flood which was an interesting conversation. One of my friends claimed that he heard screaming. I could hear it too, but I could never tell whether it was river noises, screaming, or dogs barking because canyons do a funny thing with sounds and distances especially when there are a lot of sounds.
I got the spot nearest to a ledge. Our camping spot was pretty slanted as it was but there was a bigger slant where I was at. We started trying to sleep parallel to the edges of the tarp, but I had too much ledge to even go to sleep. We turned our sleeping bags parallel to the diagonals of the tarp. The tarp kind of fit perfectly between the side of the mountain and the huge boulder and tree at our feet. This diagonal position allowed me to kind of stand up against a rock the entire night. I put my feet on a conveniently situated rock that wasn't going to move and left them there most of the night. I would roll onto one of my sides occasionally with a little bit of finesse. We woke up to find a dead cactus right next to my bag on that side. Funny how little you notice some things..
I had trouble going to sleep. The other guys fell asleep easy. There were a lot of noises during the night. I think they were horses since plenty of them tended to run free in the village. I finally fell asleep when an hour later a helicopter flew down the canyon. He then flew back up the canyon just a few minutes later. I assume he was a scout.
I woke up nice and early. Pretty much when the sun came up ~5am. I walked on the boulder and noticed that everything was still flooded. The path out of the canyon was gone, even though it was morning.
The white light in this picture is where my lamp was hanging. That's where we made our initial flood camp. The flood in the foreground is what we had to cross, though it was a lot higher. (The sand seems to have brought in a lot of sand.) My lamp was muddy on the bottom. But it was still shining. The other side of the lamp is the flooded valley that was still flooded when we left.
I went for a walk and tried not to wake the other guys. I couldn't see our previous camp until I had hiked around a little bit and I saw some horses and was trying to get a good picture. They were very curious about my lamp. I ended up only scaring them away revealing a bull. So I went back up to our camp.
I had to poo. And I'm a very curious person. So I ended up wandering up the trail in a little bit and found a spot. There was plenty of dry trail to the village along the side of the road, along the irrigation ditch for a while. The water tapered off eventually from the trail.
The First Day of Aftermath
When we all got up we hiked back to the city. At the top of the first tall hill out of the city were the other campers who had awaken us that night and about 3 horses. I'm not sure how they all fit during the night. (I doubt the horses were there at night.) The path to the city was muddy most of the way, until close a few hundred yards away from the main road. It made us curious how the houses that were a lot lower fared.
In town we met a few of the other villagers. There was a paper sign on many trees that said, "Dam breech at 8:85 AM. Tourists will be evacuated. Villagers stay posted." And there was a rumor around that it would take 4 - 6 hours for the water to get there. Most of us thought that another flood was coming, but after a while we didn't think it would get up to that part of the village. It wasn't until my drive home that I realized it should've been, "Dam breeched at 8:45 PM." That would've made a world of difference.
There was one guy there that was a professional tour guide. He had a lot of people with him. His group had about 5-10 large blue tents at the camp site when we were down there. After the first flash flood warning, I believe he went around and assigned every person in the camp a number. A few people got annoyed by it but it did help a little bit in trying to get an estimate of how many people were down there.
The emergency coordinator in our group volunteered to help with the efforts. Basically, he ended up going around trying to get people on a list to try and get a head count. And if a person had a number assigned by the tour guide, he would try and get that too. Since we had some other climbing and other experience, we were prepared for a lot of other things.
The tribal member who was a FEMA coordinator was in charge of organizing all of us. He asked if any of us (who were prepared to rescue others) had any equipment with us like rope. He told us, "We may have to get your rope from your car."
My friend suggested that we find out who has any other experience in the crowd so he sent my other friend and me through the crowds asking who had experience in emergency, rock climbing, CPR, etc. We didn't need to use that list, but if it had come down to it, we did not have a doctor or nurse in the city (who wasn't a camper) that night. We did get a good list - we had some people who have rock climbed, been nurses, and a volunteer fireman.
The number count off worked decently well. It went up to 120 people. My friends and myself helped put everything in order and figured how approximately how many people were missing. By the time the last flight came to the city, about 13 people were missing from the number count off. There are a lot of other records and since people are free to go when they please, it is hard to know who was really there or wasn't.
We were poorly informed of anything in the city. The first helicopter came at close to 9 am. That was the AZ emergency helicopter. I think I may have seen another helicopter. They basically ended up flying down to where people were stranded and took them either to the city or the hilltop, kind of based on how they were rescued or their condition. I only know the stories of the people who were taken to the village.
And most of the time, we waited.
All of the travel to the campground was by helicopter - no one took any of their vehicles for a variety of reasons - speed and the roads were crumbling.
Everyone's Stories
Over the next few hours and days we would hear stories of other people. The professional tour guide ended up gathering a lot of people after the first flood and taking them almost to the city. He also went down that morning and helped rescue a few people, since one of the bridges were out and they needed to cross it.
There was another group that ended up getting to the city by hiking a long way around the mountains - they were apparently on the right side of the river and close to a ledge you could climb up to the mountains to.
Some had to cross a washed out bridge coming to the city I belive through use of human rope.
There was a group of scouts that were stranded on an island. They were rescued by making a rope bridge. One rope strung up high to hold onto, one down low to stand on. And they climbed one by one across the flooded waters.
This one I heard second hand so I'm unsure how a couple things of it played out: One girl climbed up a tree when the first flood came. When the second flood came she was holding on to dear life. Her hands held on upstream while her back was downstream. Then a big torrent came and swept her up and around the tree so that her back was to the oncoming water. She was pressed against the tree. She was constantly battered. She was rescued basically by being asked to jump in the water. So she did. Nothing but her hand was above water but the tribal members caught her. She was among those of us who left the second day.
One group who was rescued early had lost all their packs and gear. They were among those to leave the second day too. We offered a couple of them breakfast but I'm not sure who ended up giving them food because food in the city still cost money, and they had lost everything other then the shirt on their backs.
Plenty had been awaken while still in their tents. Others had been awaken because they heard a twig snap or had to pee. Some of those woke up to 30 other people. The guys who were in their tents didn't notice that the water was there surrounding them. When they had stepped outside of their tents (one guy had to pee) they noticed that the water was pretty high. They had in their group one guy on an air mattress who had started floating away. They tried waking him up a couple times but he thought they were joking with him. He woke up soon enough though. Most of these people found high ground soon enough. The waters subsided enough by the morning to land a helicopter in some places.
I forget which story it was but I know as soon as one group left their island - I think they were on tables - shortly after huge trees came.
Most of these people lost tents and other gear. I don't know how many kept their keys or wallets with them. There was one tent that had two large trees pushed up right next to it. The two trees created a 'V' shape and created a natural dam. That tent was safe the entire night, even being deep in what should've been water. The tents right next to it disappeared though.
I haven't watched any news about it - I was in the canyon afterall and have only been home part of a day. I'm pretty sure the news stories have died down a bit. So I'm not sure what other stories there were coming out of the canyon.
So people were being rescued. The tally went up. And a lot of us kept wondering when people would actually start being taken out. They did say they were going to evacuate the village because of the flood.
Some people found access to the internet and checked stories. Plenty of them were incorrect. For example, one said that there was a Red Cross Tent with us. There was no Red Cross Tent. There was no food, other then what you bought. (I found out later that food was given out at the store Sunday night. I wish we had known that! That just tells you how little we were told.) Shelter was a single emergency blanket if you lost your bag. No one volunteered to stay another day. It was force fed to those who didn't get in line fast enough - many of whom should have left the first day had an extra nights stay, while people who had been perfectly fine or stayed in a lodge got out earlier. It was the dumb luck of the draw. I wonder if we had been told that they wouldn't be flying more people out more then a few moments in advance if we would've figured out on our own who should go first.
One news story said that everyone would get $500 for their nights stay. That was incorrect. Including everyone at once, we got $500 total in goods. The store gave out gatorade, coffee, and danishes Monday morning.
There really wasn't an inventory of that point of anyone who might have had any emergencies or needs, such as a diabetic or flood injuries.
The First Flight Out
Two apache helicopters were there at 2 PM Sunday afternoon and finally started taking people out. Up until that time I had started playing cards with some people from the East Coast. (I was very glad that I brought my DS and playing cards along the trip.) I had talked with a lot of people who had stayed at the lodge who had a perfectly good nights rest and didn't know anything went wrong until they left their room that morning.
The had us move from the standard landing pad to further down the road so they could fit two Apache helicopters. It moved really slow. I think they took out a group of eight per helicopter, which seemed to return every half hour. There were a officers from city, county, state, and the national guard was flying the helicopters. The next day there were others from DPS, NPS, and then we had the FEMA guy. That's already 7 different agencies with different flight and emergency protocols sovereign land in a place districted by everyone. I'm pretty sure everyone was confused. It wasn't until Monday that we had someone who actually was in charge. Part of the slowness could've been because it was a Sunday. The other was interdepartmental. The other part was they had to rescue others first.
Whenever a helicopter would land it would blow up a lot of crap, since the ground before had plenty of broken up horse manure. Everyone would look away or cover their faces.
The Destruction We Saw
My group realized it would be a while, so we went down the trail to check out the destruction. We met a native along the way. And he showed us around. He showed us his house and how he had a laundry machine now that he didn't have before. (There was one house that you could see flying back that was completely destroyed.)
He showed us bridges. And we went down the trail.
Hava Su Pai will never be the same again. There is a trail to Hava Su Falls but it is incredibly treacherous. A wrong step would be a 50 foot fall at least. Navajo Falls is completely gone. All the green lushness is gone. With all the trees that had been washed downstream, I bet the travertines that take hundreds of years to form are gone. I don't know if the waters or the land will be blue green again for at least a year. At the least, it will be a long time without tourism and a lot of hard work for these people.
Many people were probably very upset with the Hava Su people. Perhaps rightfully so. I feel incredibly sorry for them. Each villager we talked to had a different opinion of what the flood was and said stuff like, "Yeah, we had a flood like this in 2006, then in 2001." At that point, I'm not sure if they had seen the destruction. It will create new falls. But they will have to work hard to make it safe, to create new paths, and it will be a long time before they get tourists again.
Perhaps, they had seen this big of a flood in 1993. I would put money that this is bigger. It's hard to say because those records don't tell which buildings and which cliffs they scrambled up to for safety. Because I think we saw buildings destroyed too, and maybe not villagers, but tourists, scrambled up cliffs for safety. I do not know if they have ever endured two dam breakings. (Two dams as far as I understand. The Redmond and the cattle/crop dam.) That could be worse then their flood of the early '90s.
Even if it wasn't worse, it caused enough damage that much of it will never be restored. The village is not in any real danger. It exists in a fairly wide valley where most of the water will spread out evenly.
Navajo Falls is no more. The path around Navajo Falls doesn't exist. Much of that land simply fell. I'm sure that the little remaining will fall with just a little bit of pressure. It's sand holding up sand. The path is sand. It doesn't take much to create an avalanche.
Perhaps I'm blowing things out of proportion. I might be wrong. I'm pretty sure I'm right. Some people will be very surprised when Hava Su doesn't open for a while.
I don't know how long it will take for the new falls to become beautiful again. It will take at least a year for vegetation and repairs. Vegetation should help make it more stable.
You may wonder, why are there still great pictures of Mooney Falls and Hava Su Falls? It doesn't look like they have been affected much. Some people claim they've seen more flooding then what they saw in those videos. The answer is simple, that is about 5 times less flooding then occurred the night before. Mooney and Havasu Falls are rock. Navajo Falls is sand. The trail to the campground from navajo falls extended out at least another good 40 feet and that is all gone.
Havasupai will never ever be the same.
The Path Out of the Canyon was Flooded
We got back, waited for a little bit, then went on another hike. We didn't want to lose our spot as last in line so we had to leave. That and sitting in the same spot for most of the day isn't fun. Our next hike was to where we had camped the night before. I was curious if it was still flooded. It was. The bridge was out further up. I guess you could try and trudge through it. It would have been quicker then waiting for the helicopters. But there wasn't really any way out at that time.
Fifty villagers were sent to the hilltop, then they took a few others out. Then they announced that they wouldn't be flying anyone else out that night. Flights would resume at daybreak.
Most people headed back to the main plaza where they handed out emergency blankets for anyone who needed them. They opened up the community center for toilets. Rooms were available for $40 for whoever wanted to rent them. The charge is normally $145 per room. Most others spent the night on ant infested grass and cement. But perhaps ants don't come out at night. The lights were on for a while and I think when they went off, a big cheer was heard from everyone.
As for my party, we found another place to sleep. There were plenty of other dark and grassy spots. I personally would have preferred where I slept the night before compared to the hard concrete of the basketball court.
As we were walking, a villager invited us to join him for some television. We watched a small part of the Olympics. I fell asleep and started snoring.
Early the next morning, people were up and already in line for the helicopters by 4 am. The sun came up at 5am, which is when I woke up. I joined the line fairly quickly but we ended up being a lot later in the line, pretty much last at one point because most everyone saved a spot for someone else.
But the people who stayed at the lodge were the last ones out.
Coffee and danishes were free for everyone. Then eventually gatorade. (After I had bought some. I felt bad for the tribe so I gave a decent tip to the store owner. Funny thing about that - one guy said he would never give another cent to the tribe the day before but then ended up paying for a room.)
The helicopters arrived at 9am. At about 10:30ish other helicopters started arriving. We only had one blackhawk this time (I saw 3 the day before). But it was 10 times more efficient then the other day. We had I think 7 helicopters from many different agencies. Arizona State Rescue, National Park Services, National Guard, etc. The private charter kept bringing people in without taking anyone out. I think there were some people the day before who paid for the charter to take them out. And there was finally someone who took charge, who yelled what was going on to everyone. That's what we really missed the day before.
We had one guy there from DPS who was there volunteering on his day off. And a lot more people went on hikes that day, though we ended up having less time.
The funny thing about it is if the Hava Su nation was a US company, they would have done a lot of things different. Like not even letting us take a chance to get out of the canyon.
Since no one died, I don't think anyone can really sue for the time spent there or the lack of warning.
I really enjoyed the trip. I thought it was absolutely fascinating how the tribe and the campers responded to different situations. I really enjoyed watching the flash flood. Everyone on the ledgers was accounted for. (255 campers.) Their site says the tentative schedule to reopen is in 4 weeks. I'm betting it will be a lot longer then that.
I do have a little bit of bitterness. I actually wasn't bitter until my drive home. A long drive like that lets you have time to think. If I were in charge of the tribe, I'd probably have a lot different protocols and standards.
I wore the same clothes without changing anything or washing anything for a few days. Next time, I bring only one pair of clothes. And a ham radio. That would've made all the difference in the world. What a great last trip of the summer.
www.havasupaiflood.com
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