Post-Fire Flooding: The Museum Fire

"While traveling in Oregon we received the news that the Museum Fire in Flagstaff, Arizona was burning in the Coconino National Forest in an area of the forest not far from our Grandview neighborhood. Hearing of the fire while we were on vacation in Oregon, we needed to race back home knowing that there could be potentially heavy monsoon rains and we were advised to protect our property with sandbags.

After aborting the remainder of our vacation we began a frantic drive home to Flagstaff, and communicated with my insurance agent en route to secure flood insurance should any flood related property damage occur. Upon arrival in town we attended “Meet in the street” gatherings, talks at the high school and saw county and city workers walking our neighborhood communicating the severity of the situation and urging the application of sandbags to our properties.

With the help of friends and feeling an urgency for action precipitated by the beginning of the monsoon season, we mounted a sandbag brigade made up of willing hands, backs and vehicles. Initially the county wanted us to surround our houses so we outlined the house with sandbags. We made multiple trips to the high school to secure sandbags — filled with local cinders, not sand — which had been filled by volunteers. We were able to secure about 15 sandbags per trip in the backs of cars and trucks. As soon as we would get back home, friends would unload the bags and trudge to the growing wall and pile them up. More and more and more… 

Not more than a few days later, the county changed their instructions and told us that now we were to line the front of our yards with sandbags to create a channel for future flooding. We had to undo much of the original work while re-laying the 40-60 pound sandbags at the property perimeter. The sandbags were piled as outlined by the county in some of their communications in a pyramid shape to increase stability in a 4-3-2-1 configuration. Our walls were 4-5 sandbags high in 2019, roughly to a height of 3 feet. We calculated there were upwards of 1000 sandbags on our property.

We experienced no flooding or any appreciable rain for the remainder of the 2019 monsoon season. The following monsoon — roughly July-September of 2020 proved to be exceedingly dry as well. Almost two years of “non-soon” passed with no significant rainfall on the burn scar during 2019 or 2020. By the time the winter of 2021 arrived the sandbags had been in place for two plus monsoon seasons and were disintegrating from 18 months of sun and weather. Little by little we removed the roughly 1000, 40-60 pound sandbags from the yard, to the bed of the pick-up, 20 at a time, and took them to the county location where we could unload them onto an ever-growing discard pile of sandbags. By the early spring we had removed nearly all of the sandbags from our property.

County officials told us the summer of 2021 was likely to be a greater than normal monsoon and we needed to prepare ourselves with sandbags once again. Frustrated, I contacted the county and some of their volunteers helped us reinstall the foundation of our new sandbag wall in June of 2021, with the start of the monsoon anticipated for the beginning of July.

On July 13th we experienced our first major flood. Then one the next day. Then another two days after that. The county engineers and consultants had been right. Our street, Grandview Drive, became ground zero for the runoff from the Museum Fire burn scar. It also affected many other neighborhoods as far as a half mile away from our property. 

Can you imagine an actual river of 1000+ cubic feet per second (CFS) roaring down your street in a flash flood? On July 13th we received warnings from Coconino County and the National Weather Service on our phones, having previously signed up for the alerts. With little time to spare we took our reserve sandbags and blocked off our driveway. In the meantime, we’d moved one of our vehicles to a parking lot at the nearby shopping center, blocking in the other with the sandbags at the base of the driveway. All vehicles were to be cleared from the street. What was coming? Were we adequately prepared? 

The flash flood from the burn scar arrived about 20-40 minutes after the alert and lasted about 45 minutes. The flooding was unlike anything ever seen in the neighborhood. The street filled up. Cars on the street traveling upstream quickly backed their way downstream in terror as they saw the water coming. Not only did the street fill, bank to bank, but it kept rising. We had no idea if the sandbags would hold, if they would be overtopped, if our property would be inundated, damaged, destroyed. It was hard to look away. We got soaked in the rain. We took videos. We cursed the water. Our adrenaline surged. We were mesmerized by the flooding. We got too close. We texted our neighbors and family. We walked the perimeter of our property. We monitored the flooding at the property just upstream from us where there were no sandbags, worried about it overtopping our sandbag fortifications as the muddy water continued to flow onto the neighbor’s yard and fill up her driveway. Then it began to subside and when the water finally cleared from the street we met our neighbors, shared videos and then walked the street to see what the flood left behind. Woody debris littered the street. Sticks, logs, piles of pine needles, branches, and mud, mud and more mud. It filled the driveways which hadn’t been blocked off. It filled the cul-de-sacs which acted as eddies where the water slowed and the silt and mud was deposited as it lost momentum. The drainage up the street was woefully inadequate. Debris from the burn scar blocked the water from continuing through the culvert and down the drainage as normal so, instead it crawled upslope, out onto the cross street and tumbled down Grandview Drive, the path of least resistance. 

On July 14th, fearing the next flood event, we joined others at county services to obtain more sandbags. This time we filled them ourselves. There were volunteers there too. What else could we do but build higher and stronger sandbag walls? That afternoon we had our second flood. Then two days later we had our third flood. When would this end? We were tied to our property every afternoon in case we had flooding. July 16 we were caught away from home, having lunch with out-of-town friends. When the alerts came on our phone I stayed with our friends while my partner Jeff hopped our back wall with the help of our neighbor and her ladder to be at home because our street was already inundated. 

Then came a month of tentative forays from the house. We barely ventured far from home, let alone out of town, especially in the afternoons when the rain would most likely occur. On August 17 the worst of the flooding came. A flood bigger than any we’d experienced. And I was by myself at home. The rain came, then the alert. The rain poured down. I ran outside to begin walling up the driveway with sandbags and my neighbors came to help. But they needed to tend to their properties across the street so I finished closing off the driveway by myself with 40+ pound. sandbags five layers high in the pyramid formation as they ran across the street in ankle-deep water to their own properties to secure them.

And what have we experienced since August? Meetings with elected officials, meetings with the City public works department, letters to politicians, sympathetic gestures, street sweepers, dust clouds, continued fears, anxieties, nightmares, apparent greater and swifter mitigation in more affluent neighborhoods... 

‘Lookie-loos’ drive the neighborhood even though the sign says 'road closed to local traffic,' potholes made bigger but neglected because 'we don’t know what future mitigation measures might be taken.' We’ve been told it could take 5-10 years for some type of mitigation. Will it be enough? US Forest Service, Coconino County, City of Flagstaff, red tape, no money, ongoing flood threats, property depreciation, lives disrupted, access to homes reduced, parking inconvenience, flood related Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)*, snow removal, and further deterioration of existing sandbags…and climate change making these floods — said to be 250-500 year events — more common than we care to imagine.

And even in October we were stuck at home as another flash flood threat emerged and we monitored local rain gauges throughout the day as the rains came and went. The threat and worry is ongoing and, at times, all-consuming. The unknown future flood that will cause damage, not feeling truly safe in our own home, not knowing if this situation will ever improve. Are sandbags and promises enough to keep us safe?"

*It should be noted that PTSD is a known potential outcome for some individuals who experience natural disasters. ( Lee et al. 2020 ,  Belleville et al. 2019  and  Bryant et al. 2014 )