FLOOD08840

• County: Statewide
• Basin: Statewide
• Title: The Floods of June 1972
• Date: 6/23/1972
• Floodplain - Doc Type: Flood Documentation Report

Formerly Arid Arizona

In Scottsdale, where the Arizona Canal broke in four places on
June 22, city officials estimated damage to homes, city facilities
and buildings at between $30- and $50-million. Most of the
flood damage was caused north of the Arizona Canal in homes,
resorts and business establishments.
In one area of Scollsdale around East Cholla Koad there were
about 150 homes destroyed and more than 200 others severely
damaged, with the total loss estimated at more than $7,500,000.
Torrential rains in the wake of the tornado, accompanied by
hailstones as large as ice cubes, spread flood destruction indis-
criminately throughout Maricora, Pinal and Pima counties.
Damage in Maricopa was estimated at $3,000,000; in Pinal at
$200,000; and in Pima at $300,000.
Perhaps hardest hit of all communities was Eloy, a farm town
of 5.381 residents where damage was estimated at $1,000,000.
Yet Phoenix suffered too, as three to four inches of rain in
about two hours left prorerty owners with debris-strewn homes
inundated with several feet of water. While not immediately
determined, financial losses in the city from flood damage were
described as heavy.
10 Paradise Valley, another hard hit commuoity, a resident
described the destruction in these terms:
"You just can't believe how much rain there was. It just
flooded like you can't believe. I was in the house when it hit. It
sounded like a tremendously strong wind and water was rouring
through like there was no door."
The homeowner added that the door had weather strirring,
but the wind ripped it away, leaving the house vulnerable to
sheets of driving rain.
The type of destruction caused by the combination of elements
was described also in the aftermath of the storm by Lee Pierce,
a staff writer for the Scottsdale Daily Progress, following an
aerial tour of his commuoity:
"In some residential areas, the scene took on the arrearance
of a battleground with stark, garing holes and roofs and bits of
lumber strewn about. Many other homes had no roofs at all,
and the winds had reduced homes to nothing but a pile of
splintered lumber."

The reporter found that the main stream of flood waters
formed a large river flowing through the center of Scollsdale.
He said that: "I could see homes imprisoned by encircling flood
waters. In some places, livestock huddled together on high
ground to escape the muddy waters."
In the wake of the storm, Ari/ona Goveroor Jack Williams
and the state government were attemrting to have Scottsdale,
Phoenix and Paradise Valley declared disaster areas so that gov-
ernment aid would be made available to victims of the storms.

21