Witnesses: Before Big Cottonwood flooding Sunday, there was a rescue in the same area

SALT LAKE CITY — Just three hours prior to a debris blockage that caused a culvert to back up and overflow onto the road in Big Cottonwood Canyon Sunday, rescuers had to free a man from a boulder in the same area.

Rick and Lori Roach of Oklahoma were in Utah visiting family and sightseeing. As they drove through the Big Cottonwood Canyon Sunday afternoon, they noticed what looked like a water feature near the Storm Mountain picnic area and decided to stop for photos.

"We saw some people up in the creek bed, and it looked like they were hunting for rocks and stuff, you know," Rick Roach said during an interview with KSL.

Soon, someone approached the couple for help.

"There was a man up there that had his leg almost from his knee up to all the way down to the bottom of his foot buried in some small rocks with a big boulder laying on top of his ankle and his leg there," Rick Roach said. "We started to dig his leg out, but it looked like that was kind of futile, and also we thought maybe if we kept digging, that would cause that big rock, that boulder, to compress even more and smash down on his leg."

After Rick Roach and a stranger were unable to free the man, Lori Roach called 911.

Rick Roach said the first Unified Fire Authority crew arrived in under five minutes, and crews were able to use heavy machinery to rescue the man.

"We call them 'spreaders,'" explained UFA spokesperson Patrick Costin. "They can just move really heavy things, so they actually used some of that equipment to move the rock and get the patient out from it."

Costin said the man was transported to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

It was later that evening that Utah Department of Transportation crews responded to the same area to deal with tons of debris blocking a culvert, leading to waters gushing down the canyon road.

Rick Roach said Lori Roach had remarked at the time they were in the area that it could potentially be dangerous.

"She had actually thought that was a possibility of danger and it had never entered my mind," Rick Roach said. "I just knew it was raining."

Costin said the ordeal served as a good reminder about the weather and changing conditions outdoors.

"Where the patient was trapped, it was kind of where the water came up a bit — not to the point where it was going to be over their head, but to the point where you get much more wet, much more cold," Costin said. "Then, all of a sudden, it's a different situation."

He urged people to check the forecast and know the conditions before adventuring in the mountains.

Roach said he was grateful the rescue happened when it did and not a couple hours later when the backed-up culvert became an issue.

"(It was) quite ironic or maybe even serendipitous that whole thing happened, and they were able to get him out before that major flooding came," Rick Roach said. "Thank God we were out of that area before the flooding came."

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