PHOENIX (AP) – When a wall of water came toward him, all Cesar Garcia could think to do was protect his young daughter and try to save his nephew.
Garcia and his extended family were celebrating his sister’s birthday with a trip from Phoenix to a waterfall known as Water Wheel in the central Arizona wilderness.
The family, including his mother, sisters and brother, brother-in-law, nieces and nephews, were a mile into their hike when a flash flood hit July 15, an unrelenting torrent that killed everyone in the group of 14 but Garcia, his wife and two children.
“All of the sudden this wave appeared from far away, and I screamed to them, ‘Hey, let’s get out of the way! Let’s get out of the way!’ But it was coming too fast, we couldn’t do anything,” he told The Associated Press in his Phoenix home Wednesday.
Garcia instinctively clutched his 1-year-old daughter, Marina, and grabbed the shirt of his nephew who had fallen. But the boy slipped from his grasp.