2 Inches of Rain Fall in Phoenix, Flooding Streets, Trapping Drivers

Heavy rain caused street flooding in parts of the Phoenix area Thursday and filled a wash with a rushing torrent of water that trapped two motorists for about an hour.

Firefighters waded into the Indian Bend Wash just after noon to help the two people out of their cars. The rescuers huddled around the motorists as they walked through knee-high water.

The Scottsdale portion of the wash runs for eight miles and was built in the 1970s as a flood-control measure, city spokesman Mike Phillips said.

It’s a normally dry greenbelt with parks and golf courses, but it runs with water during heavy storms. At those times it can look like a raging river.

“Today it’s functioning as it was intended to do, and that is carry a heck of a lot of water out of the mountains,” Phillips said.

He said the water was running about 3 feet deep Thursday. Some roads that cross the wash also become flooded during the rains.

The Scottsdale Fire Department answered more than 50 calls Thursday morning relating to the storm. The calls consisted mostly of car accidents due to water on the roads and lightning striking trees, said Fire Department spokesman David Cieslak.

Also Thursday, a woman driving through a flooded Phoenix intersection was trapped briefly when the rushing water began to slowly carry her car, but firefighters rescued her, said Mike Sandulak, a division chief with the Phoenix Fire Department.

Several other cars were also stranded in the intersection, but no one else needed to be rescued, Sandulak said.

Sandulak said that people needing rescues in such situations usually have driven past barricades but that the woman trapped Thursday hadn’t done that.

National Weather Service meteorologist Doug Green said as much as 2 inches of rain fell Thursday around the Phoenix area.