A 46-year-old man was found dead along the Colorado River after the violent sudden floods that Saturday afternoon affected one of the most frequented areas of the Grand Canyon, in Arizona. His body was recovered Sunday evening near Crystal Rapids. The National Park Service did not spread its name or clarify the circumstances of death. In addition to the man, about 15 other people are “missing or unaccounted for”, i.e. dispersed or not yet tracked: the number was reduced compared to the more than twenty reported initially and could change again while the movements of hikers and campers are reconstructed.
Bright Angel Canyon, a narrow side valley from North Rim descends to Colorado, and the Phantom Ranch area, the small complex of accommodation and campsites located on the bottom of the Grand Canyon and can be reached only on foot, on the back of a mule or by the river. It is one of the areas in which the conformation of the canyon makes particularly dangerous the very intense rains: the water that falls higher is channeled into the gorges and can get more downstream when on the spot it has already stopped raining.
Saturday the situation has changed in a few minutes: around 14:30 local time, at 23:30 in Italy, the Bright Angel Creek began to grow rapidly. At 14:42 Flagstaff’s National Weather Service had already issued an alert for a “potentially lethal impromptu foot”: radar estimated between 6 and 13 mm of rain already fallen, with other expected rainfalls. In the afternoon estimates rose up to about 19 millimeters fallen in less than half an hour in some parts of the basin.
The Grand Canyon is enough to cause very serious consequences. The problem mainly concerns the speed with which water is concentrated in the gorges. In the videos recorded by the hikers you can see water courses become brown for the mud, logs dragged by the current and new waterfalls form on the walls of the canyon. Parth Desai, who was in the area along with a group of doctors and a ranger, told the Los Angeles Times that he saw the stream flooding while around they began landslides and falls of rocks. The group was then evacuated by helicopter.
Overall, at least 62 people were taken away from Phantom Ranch and the lower part of the North Kaibab Trail. The operations continued on Sunday also in Cottonwood Campground and in other areas accessible with difficulty on the ground. The evacuates were transferred to the Maswik Lodge, South Rim, where the American Red Cross organised assistance.
The research now concerns especially those who might have found themselves along the Bright Angel Creek corridor on Saturday afternoon. The National Park Service asked for information on the people who traveled the North Kaibab Trail, on those who had booked the Bright Angel Campground and on those who were in the area called “the Box”, a particularly narrow section of the canyon just north of Phantom Ranch. The canyon is an area with very limited telephone coverage, and precisely for this reason the authorities have to caute us with alarmism about who has not yet been tracked, because it does not necessarily mean that he has been involved in the full.
The damage, however, is extensive. Almost all pedestrian bridges on the Bright Angel Creek were destroyed, interrupting several links used by hikers. The water has transported up to Colorado large rocks, pieces of metal structures and other debris, modifying in some points the bed of the stream and creating or expanding a rapid. For precaution also the traffic of the boats on Colorado has been suspended. Phantom Ranch, the Bright Angel Campground and the whole North Kaibab Trail are closed indefinitely.
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