Flash flooding strands family in Capitol Reef

TORREY, Wayne County — Flash flood waters left one family stranded far away from their campsite at Capitol Reef National Park.

Barry Cann was camping with family members. They were staying at the Fruita campground and went to explore the Cathedral Valley on Saturday.

Cann said they could see storm clouds far off in the distance, so they weren't concerned initially. But then they noticed a nearby creek bed was filling up with water.

"It's rising little by little, and it's getting a little more angry, and it finally gets so tall, it probably rose in about half an hour from about a foot to, I wouldn't even say half an hour, probably 15 minutes, from a foot to four feet," Cann said.

Cann said they decided to wait it out and stopped for lunch. But after a few hours, the water hadn't receded much, and he said the mud they needed to drive on was a sticky clay. He and his family decided the river wasn't worth trying to drive across.

"I thought it would be through it in a few hours and then we go back over, and we watch the river get more angry, and there's debris coming down now," Cann said.

Cann said someone with him was able to text emergency services with the satellite function on her phone.

"They said, 'Well, do you have any medical emergencies?' We said, 'No.' They said, 'How much food do you have?' And we said, 'Probably enough for a couple days.' They said, 'How much water?' Same, couple of days. And at that point they basically said, 'OK, good luck. We're not going to come out and get you. We're dealing with other issues right now,'" Cann recalled.

Fortunately, they packed enough food and drinks for multiple meals. They camped in their cars overnight.

The water receded in the morning, and they made it out safely.

"We didn't have a shovel. That's the one thing that I would have loved to have," Cann said. "We took it very carefully through the riverbed. And then when we got to that mud bank, we just floored it and went up the mud bank, and we made it."

Cann said the experience would've been far worse had they not had enough food or water to last. He said he grew up exploring Utah deserts, but had never experienced a flash flood.

"Very disconcerting," he said. "We don't know what else the weather's going to do. It's kind of like, okay, well, we have our car, we have our food and water. You're panicking a little bit."

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