Climate Change is Here

Meanwhile, Mike Reynolds made it through the flood debris to his office at Furnace Creek, and with the Chief Ranger they started gathering as much information as they could to determine how to deal with the situation. However, one thing was clear: their first priority was the safety of visitors and staff. Helicopters from both the California Highway Patrol and China Lake were requested to check for stranded visitors in the backcountry and engage in rescues if needed.

Beyond that, as Mike explained, “In the midst of a rain event such as this, there is usually much confusion and a distinct lack of clarity. It’s unavoidable. Staff can only know what they can see, and we have to rely on many reports that come in from different locations before we can determine what we’re dealing with. ” The park radio was monitored constantly. They may not have had many of the details yet, but they already understood that this was a major incident.

All park roads were closed. Nearly 1000 visitors and staff couldn’t leave the park. Most were in the Furnace Creek area, and a few were at the small community of Stovepipe Wells, which was also completely isolated. At the Oasis at Death Valley, approximately 60 vehicles in the parking lot had been partly buried in debris and shoved into each other by dumpsters and debris. Fifty hotel rooms at the Ranch at Death Valley had flooded. The Cow Creek water system was destroyed.

Part of the problem was that the park had already experienced two significant rain events. The first rain storm on July 29 was followed by a more serious one on July 31. A visitor’s car had been swept off Highway 190 just east of Towne Pass, and the highway was closed for a day and a half for clean-up. There had also been pavement damage on North Highway, and Cow Creek’s water system sustained serious damage. Because the August 5 rain event was the third in a relatively short period of time, the ground was already saturated, and this contributed to the large amounts of water coursing over the surface.

But that was not the end of it. Three more storm systems followed on August 16, 18, and 25. The remnants of Hurricane Kay came along on September 10 and 11. Then one more arrived on September 13 bringing the total to nine serious rain events, one after another. That’s a lot of water in one of the driest places on Earth…

Death Valleyites had had enough. April said, “We were all exhausted and tired of the rain. We put the barricades up to close roads that were no longer passable. Then road crew would work hard to clear the roads. When they were done we would open the roads and take all the stuff down, only to do it all over again, and again, and again. There is no doubt we needed rain, but this just didn’t stop. Unfortunately one of the problems we encountered was that a few people drove around the closures and created illegal roads where there had not been any. This resulted in more damage to the landscape.” Elyscia commented on another issue: some people blindly followed navigation devices which directed them onto unsafe dirt roads in an attempt to bypass closed paved roads and enter the park anyway. There were dozens of visitors in rental cars that became stuck in a remote area near Chloride Cliff – with many of them abandoning the vehicles in the desert after getting multiple flat tires.

After all that, rain events weren’t the whole story. Between August 30 and September 7 another record was set. For nine consecutive days, temperatures soared over 120 degrees Fahrenheit setting new records each day and resulting in the hottest September ever. For a few nights the temperature never dropped below 100 degrees. In the recorded history of Death Valley temperatures, the month of September had never seen temperatures like this until 2022.

The humidity was excruciating. At Cow Creek, where the offices and maintenance yard are, there was no running water due to the storm damage to the water system. Water had to be trucked in. Porto-potties were installed, although these were rather challenging to use in temperatures of 120 degrees F. The water system was out of commission for approximately six weeks. Simply put, there was a lot to deal with.

Unlike the disastrous floods of 2015 which completely destroyed Scotty’s Castle infrastructure, this time the park service had an advantage. Five members of its management team had been involved with the 2015 storms occurring over a two week period. Lessons learned then were now effectively put into practice.

When the sequelae of the August 5 event became clearer, the park declared an emergency and was placed under an Incident Command protocol. This meant an “all hands on deck situation,” and regular duties were suspended for many staff members. All-staff meetings were held every morning to exchange information and organize tasks. Assistance was also requested from other parks, and approximately 75 employees came to help.

These rain events were so big and so relentless that the full extent of the damage was unknown for weeks. It took time to compile the information because staff had to access various areas to survey the damage in different places. In many locations that was much easier said than done. “It was interesting,” said Mike. “For instance, we had not known until a week later that the boardwalk at Salt Creek had been completely destroyed. If you were not familiar with the area, you would have never known that there had ever even been a boardwalk.”