Tourists find safety after floods close Death Valley road

Hundreds of hotel guests were able to drive away after crews cleared a passage through rocks and dirt during flash flooding in Death Valley National Park in the United States.

However, roads damaged by flooding or clogged with debris are expected to remain closed until next week, officials said.

The National Park Service said the Navy and California Highway Patrol helicopters had been conducting aerial searches of the stranded vehicle in the remote area but could not find it.

Assessing damage can take days—the park near the California-Nevada line has more than 1,000 miles of roads and 3.4 million acres.

The record rainfall on Friday caused no casualties. The park experienced 1.46 inches of rain in the Furnace Creek area. That’s about 75 percent of what the region typically gets in a year, and more than was recorded for the entire month of August.

The only rainy day since 1936 was April 15, 1988, when 1.47 inches of rain fell, park officials said.

Restaurant worker Nikki Jones, who was staying at the hotel with colleagues, said it was raining when she went to breakfast on Friday morning. When she came back, the water that quickly gathered had reached the door of the room.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Ms Jones said. “I’ve never seen water rise so fast in my life.”

Concerned that water would get into their first-floor room, Ms Jones and her friends put their luggage on the bed and used towels at the bottom of the door to prevent water from getting in. For about two hours, they wondered if they would be flooded.

“People around me are saying they’ve never seen something this bad before – they’ve been working here for a while,” Ms Jones said.

While their room survived, five or six other rooms in the hotel were flooded. The carpets in these rooms were later torn off.

Most of the rain came from an epic downpour Friday between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m., said John Adair, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Las Vegas.

Mr Adair said the flooding “cut off access to and from Death Valley, only washing the road and creating a lot of debris”.

Officials said Highway 190 — a major thoroughfare through the park — is expected to reopen Tuesday between Furnace Creek and Pahrump, Nevada.

In addition to the emergency, park employees, who were trapped by the closed roads, continued to shelter in place, officials said.

“The whole tree and the boulder were washed away,” said John Sirlin, a photographer for an Arizona adventure company, who was sitting on a boulder on a hillside to witness the floodwaters as he tried to make the storm approaching. Take pictures of lightning.

“The sound of some of the rocks coming down the mountain was unbelievable,” he said.

In most areas, the water has receded, leaving behind a dense layer of dirt and gravel.

About 60 cars were partially buried in dirt and debris. There have been numerous reports of road damage, and residential water lines in the park’s Cow Creek area have been damaged in multiple locations. About 20 palm trees fell on the road near a hotel, and some staff homes were also damaged.

“Because of the severity and breadth of this rain, it will take time to rebuild and reopen everything,” Park Superintendent Mike Reynolds said in a statement.

The storm came after major flooding at the park 120 miles northeast of Las Vegas earlier this week. Some roads were closed Monday after flash floods in western Nevada and northern Arizona were flooded with mud and debris.