Tonto National Forest, Ariz.
Crews were facing difficult conditions in their search at the Tonto National Forest, where the stream bed was coated with thick mud and searchers made slow progress in past days trying to move through muck up to their knees. The debris is up to 6 feet deep in some spots.
The searchers are trying to find 27-year-old Hector Miguel Garnica, whose wife, three young children and other extended family members were killed on Saturday after a torrent of water from a thunderstorm upstream roared through the area. His family gathered at the mountain swimming hole about 100 miles northeast of Phoenix to celebrate his wife’s birthday.
The violent surge of water sent tree trunks and limbs tumbling down the waterway. Five of the dead were children.
Five other people were rescued, some of them after clinging desperately to trees until they were pulled from the water by rescuers.
The storm dumped up to 1.5 inches of rain in an hour, prompting a flash flood warning from the National Weather Service. Though the service sent out a flash-flood warning over cellphone networks, service in the remote area is patchy at best. Unless they had a weather radio, the swimmers would have been unaware.
A crew of 40 volunteers who became exhausted after days of searching was replaced by 75 forestry workers, law enforcement officers and others.
Initially, the searchers focused on the stream banks, but later started to sift through muddy tree branches and other debris. Forestry crews also used saws to cut up wood debris to provide access for other searchers.
A flash flood watch was issued on Tuesday for northern Arizona, including the area that’s being searched.
An official said crews would be pulled out for the night due to weather conditions, but the search was scheduled to resume this morning.