Three Die as Flash Flood Hurls Car Into Channel

A flash flood swept a car off the road and into a flood channel Tuesday, killing two women and a rescuer who had helped pulled a 14-year-old passenger to safety before he was washed away and drowned.

A thunderstorm, the second to hit the Mojave Desert in a week, sent muddy water over roads and into homes throughout the High Desert communities of Twentynine Palms and Joshua Tree. Wet roads were blamed for a second accident that killed a motorist. At one point, up to an inch of rain fell on hard-packed sands in less than 30 minutes, authorities said.

The deaths in Twentynine Palms occurred when the car stalled and a sudden torrent washed it from the street and into a storm culvert, carrying it about three blocks. The three passengers -- a 14-year-old girl, her mother and her aunt -- struggled to escape. A family friend who saw the accident chased the car as it swirled in the thick brown water.

“The water was coming down hard, as though a faucet had been turned on above our heads,” said witness Nancy Casper, a freelance videographer who was photographing the weather. “Then we heard ‘Car into the creek’ on the police scanner.” Moments later, Casper and her crew spotted the car foundering in the wash, “with huge waves roiling around it.”

Casper said the man who chased the car and a female passenger who had managed to get out pulled at the door handle, freed the girl and carried her to dry land. As the girl sat soaked and crying beside the wash, the pair returned for the driver.

“They were trying to help the driver out when a huge wall of water flipped the car over on top of them,” Casper said. “It is so, so sad. These were heroes who gave their lives to save the 14-year-old.”

Robin Haynal, a sheriff’s spokeswoman, said the driver died in the car, and the bodies of her sister and the rescuer were recovered four miles downstream.

Joe Meyers, 40, a Twentynine Palms resident and volunteer at the local library, said he had run to a ledge overlooking the wash just minutes after the victims were swept away. “The water was roaring several feet deep. I heard boulders crashing into each other. The car was upside-down with one black tire sticking out above the waterline.”

Authorities identified the sisters as Laura Lee Ridgeway, 38, of Joshua Tree and Leslie Jean Juarez, 36, of Twentynine Palms, the mother of the 14-year-old. Authorities did not release the identity of the rescuer, saying they had yet to inform relatives, but described him as a 28-year-old friend of the women.

“The citizen saved the 14-year-old’s life,” said San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Sgt. Jack Phillips. “This is pretty unusual. I’ve been doing this for [30] years, and I’ve never seen something of this magnitude before.”

In Twentynine Palms, water flooded at least 14 homes, some more than a foot deep, said Sue Hood, a dispatcher with the San Bernardino County Fire Department. There were 14 swift-water rescues with no injuries, she said.

The city declared a state of emergency, City Clerk Char Sherwood said.

Twentynine Palms, which is 120 miles east of Los Angeles, and other towns in the Mojave Desert are susceptible to flash flooding this time of year. Warm, moist air from the Caribbean frequently drifts into Southern California in August and September.

Energized by heat from the desert, the moisture condenses into massive thunderheads that dump large volumes of water in a brief period.

“It’s a desert town, and lots of times the soil can absorb a little rainfall, but when you get a lot, it can’t absorb it all and it just flows and flows,” said Mark Moede, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in San Diego.

“It will flow into dry channels and onto streets where the drainage isn’t that great. It’ll just fill the streets up.”

Some areas reported that at least a couple of inches had fallen by early evening. The heaviest was between 11 a.m. and 1:30 p.m., Moede said. “That’s when we saw the swift-water rescues.”

Public works crews are expected to work throughout the night, putting up barricades and telling people to keep out of the water, Sherwood said.

By 5 p.m. Tuesday, bulldozers were clearing a foot-thick coating of rocks and mud along Twentynine Palms Highway. At the sight of the wash accident, about 20 friends and relatives stood around the mangled car, which had been hauled from the wash. The wheel wells, engine and interior were choked with weeds and stones.