Schultz Fire Aftermath: Deadly Mudflows
The Schultz Fire claimed its first victim this week, a 12-year-old girl.
Mudflows below the Schultz fire inundate houses, block roads, clog culverts
by CYNDY COLE and JOE FERGUSON, Arizona Daily Sun , July 21, 2010 [here]
Shaelyn Wilson, 12, died Tuesday afternoon after falling into a flooded wash south of the old White Vulcan pumice mine near her neighborhood.
She had been watching the floodwaters with her sister after the thunderstorm.
Her sister ran home, where her father called 911 at 2:18 p.m., then immediately went to search for his missing daughter.
A water rescue crew and an air crew with the Arizona Department of Public Safety were deployed to find the girl.
Coconino County Sheriff’s Office deputies said floodwaters pushed the girl through a culvert and under North Highway 89.
Her body was found by the girl’s father downstream about a third of a mile from the highway.
She was taken to Flagstaff Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead.
A cloudburst over the San Francisco Peaks fell on the area burned last month in the 15,000-acre Schultz fire, moving boulders into roads and pushing sheds across yards.
Residents said the approaching water and ash sounded like an avalanche, a jet engine, or a loud truck as it came off the mountains into Timberline, flooding some homes and leaving many others with mostly mud in the yard. …
For more about the Schultz Fire see [here, here, here, here, here]
