In brief
After last week’s storms swelled rivers and shook infrastructure, authorities in the Southwestern United States have declared emergencies and called for federal aid. Record‑breaking rains inundated communities from Flagstaff to Pagosa Springs, destroyed homes, forced evacuations and disrupted sanitation systems, with damage estimates reaching $200 million in New Mexico and $65 million for federal roads in Colorado.
In the early hours of Monday, the storm‑laden Southwest saw flood waters rise so rapidly that residents in Flagstaff, Arizona, were forced to evacuate and a man was swept away to his death, local police said.
Across the region, firefighters in Phoenix and nearby Scottsdale rescued motorists trapped in Santiago Canyon, while Las Vegas‑Valley officials in Henderson reported a similar rescue; the rescued man later died in a hospital, a city spokesperson confirmed.
Downstream in Colorado, the small town of Pagosa Springs remained under evacuation orders after the San Juan River breached a mill failure; a bridge on U.S. Highway 160 was closed because erosion threatened a museum building that could collapse into the river, an official said.
Pagosa Springs had said it had begun reopening roads and stabilizing its sewer system the previous week, but renewed flooding on Sunday forced a sewage discharge, jeopardizing what remained of its still‑weakened sanitation system, a town government spokesperson told reporters.
The Colorado Department of Transportation estimated $65 million in damage to federal‑aid highways during the storm, and warned that high water had blocked full inspections of bridges and other structures, the department said.
In New Mexico, damage in San Juan County and surrounding areas could exceed $200 million, the governor’s office said, while thousands of homes were flooded between Farmington and Bloomfield and hundreds of people had to be rescued from water, a state emergency‑management agency said.
Flooding also pushed north into Utah, displacing seven families and four businesses around Bluff, the state emergency management agency reported on Friday.
Water in the San Juan River, a major waterway that runs from Colorado through New Mexico and into Utah, also overtopped sewage lagoons in San Juan County, prompting state officials to warn residents to avoid contact with the river, a county health officer said.
With the rain dragging on into the central United States, experts have described the wettest two‑day period in Colorado in at least a century. State climatologist Russ Schumacher said the late‑October storms were among the most extreme in Colorado’s history, according to a Colorado Climate Center analysis.
Officials in Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico declared emergency status or have asked for federal assistance in response to the flooding, a national news agency said.
While agencies are conducting rescues and opening routes, the flooding threatens to set back the progress of recovery efforts that had been underway in communities after the system of dikes, channels and pumps had been refreshed in the spring, an infrastructure watchdog stated.