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WEST VALLEY CITY — A group of friends hoping to escape the flash floods in Las Vegas instead encountered a more terrifying situation on I-15 in the Moapa Valley Monday with a raging river of brown flood waters crossing and laying waste to the interstate.
“A lot went through my mind,” recalled Denny Zaravia, safe at home Tuesday. “I was like, ‘I just turned 26. I want to live a lot longer. I’m not ready to go yet.’ ”
Zaravia was in Las Vegas with his friends to celebrate his 26th birthday. They were on northbound I-15 about 30 miles outside Mesquite when they encountered a traffic stand-still.
“We looked and noticed that we were surrounded by water,” Zaravia said. “We couldn’t go forward, we couldn’t go backward — we were stuck.”
The water quickly arrived at their car.
“The center divider that divides both freeways (northbound and southbound I-15) was over-flooded,” Zaravia said. “It ‘super-expanded’ to the point where it became one giant crater.”
He said the water level rose to just below the front hood of his car and the flood waters sloshed against his windows.
“It got to the point to where the car was starting to rock,” he said. “There was a giant hole that was a whirlpool-type deal. Our car was starting to drift sideways a little bit.”
Related:
Heavy rain rips apart I-15 in Nevada, forces freeway closure
The Southwest was mopping up Tuesday after pouring rains and flash flooding washed out part of a major roadway between Las Vegas and Salt Lake City; swelled a river so high that a Utah national park downstream was briefly shuttered; and closed a 50-mile stretch of heavily traveled Interstate 15 when soggy pavement crumbled.Zaravia said though cars behind him were able to reverse their way out of the flood waters, he and his friends couldn’t maneuver away because there was already mud beneath them and the car’s tires just spun.
“The best bet was to throw on the (emergency brake), sit tight and pray, I guess,” he shrugged. “That’s all we had left.”
Fortunately, Zaravia and friends — who were documenting the entire encounter with their smartphone cameras — survived to witness the aftermath. Their video shows miles of collapsed median and mud-soaked interstate.
Utah Highway Patrol Sgt. Todd Royce said there isn’t a perfect answer on what to do if flood waters overtake a car and it starts to drift away, but he advised grabbing ahold of something. He said, generally, the chances of survival increase by staying with a car, but there are no guarantees.
In the case of a car stuck in flood waters where the vehicle is not moving, Royce advised staying put and possibly moving to the top of the car if the flood waters rise too high.
The best advice, the sergeant said, is not to get caught in flood waters in the first place.
Zaravia said he and his friends were stuck and didn’t have a choice. They were simply thankful to escape a situation they had never encountered before.
“It was the first, and I never want to experience it again,” he said.
