Survivors of deadly Grand Canyon flash flood say they ran for their lives

Survivors of a deadly flash flood that swept through the floor of the Grand Canyon over the weekend described a horrific escape as they ran through rising muddy water in a desperate effort to reach higher ground.

Gabriel Bergemann and David Gregory told ABC News that they were backpacking together at the bottom of the national park on Saturday afternoon when disaster struck, and park rangers told them to run across a footbridge over a raging creek to higher ground.

Bergemann said that 10 minutes after crossing the bridge, a wall of water came through and washed it away.

“If they hadn’t told us to evacuate when they did, I think a lot of people wouldn’t have made it,” he told ABC News.

Gregory added that the water level in the creek they crossed seemed to be “getting bigger and bigger as more water was coming into the creek.”

“I was just thinking that if someone fell into the creek, I don’t know how they would be able to get out,” he said.

Grand Canyon National Park Service officials said on Monday that a second body had been recovered from the flooded area. A search continued for more than a dozen people who remain missing or unaccounted for.

One of the individuals missing was earlier identified as Texas chiropractor Dr. John Giusti in a message posted on Facebook by Whipple City Family Chiropractic in New York, according to ABC affiliate WFAA. Giusti’s family confirmed that he was among the dead on Monday.

Giusti, who worked for ChiroHabit in Granbury, Texas, was a former partner at Whipple City Family Chiropractic, which posted a message on Facebook from Giusti’s wife, who said he was with a hiking group when the flash flood swept through the area where they were camping. In her message, Giusti’s wife described him as a “deeply loved husband, father and pillar of our family.”

More than 60 people, most of them hikers and campers, were air evacuated from Grand Canyon’s Phantom Ranch and the lower North Kaibab Trail on Saturday, according to park officials.

The flood hit around 2:30 p.m. local time in the Bright Angel Canyon and Phantom Ranch areas of the Grand Canyon amid a monsoonal downpour that produced “a significant flash-flood event,” officials said.

Erica Viola and her husband, Scott Svedin, told ABC News they were camping at Bright Angel Campground when they were told to evacuate immediately.

“This was something out of a movie,” said Svedin, who described struggling through knee-high water and mud to reach safety.

Viola added, “We just heard people yell, ‘Run, Run, Run.’ And there’s 40 of us running through this deep muddy water trying to make it to the bridge.”

Viola said that once she and Svedin got across the footbridge, it was destroyed by the torrent of floodwater that turned the creek they had crossed into a raging river.

“Once we got to the bridge, that’s when this 15-foot wall of water came through the campground at Phantom Ranch and just wiped out all the bridges in the creek,” Viola said.

Viola said that she lost most of her belongings in the flooding.

The Grand Canyon National Park Service (NPS) said in a statement on Sunday that the flooding caused extensive damage to infrastructure in the inner canyon, including the Transcanyon Waterline, which supplies water from the canyon for use in the park.

“The flash flood resulted in significant impacts to infrastructure throughout Bright Angel Canyon. Nearly all footbridges spanning Bright Angel Creek were destroyed, eliminating hiker access across the creek,” the Grand Canyon NPS said.

The Grand Canyon NPS said the Transcanyon Waterline is currently not operational, leaving the entire park with limited water reserves. As a result, all overnight guest lodging and concessions inside the park have been halted.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Giusti’s name and his most recent employer.