Overnight flooding and debris blocked the only vehicle bridge out of Cave Springs Campground near Sedona, leaving about 65 people stranded while officials arranged emergency food and reported no injuries.
Heavy overnight rain pushed Oak Creek over its banks at Cave Springs Campground, about 30 minutes north of Sedona along Oak Creek Canyon, and left the sole exit bridge impassable under rushing water, trees, and wood.
Authorities put the number of people trapped inside at roughly 65. The Daily Mail reported that the Coconino County Sheriff’s Office had reached the campground host, was monitoring the scene, and was working with other agencies on a food drop while water stayed too high for vehicles to cross safely. No injuries were reported.
Visitors who had driven in the evening before woke to find they could not drive out. Emergency crews could not reach the far bank by road either.
Steve Branch, a visitor from Denver, told Fox 10 Phoenix by phone from the far side of the flooded creek that his group had planned a short stop.
"We came in about five o'clock last night and everything was fine,"
he said.
"We were leaving this morning."
By morning, the bridge was another story.
"It looks to me like we've got a couple of trees that have gotten stuck on the bridge and there's not much way across that bridge,"
Branch said. He added that it looked like they could not get back across to the open side.
Seasonal worker Edgar Cano, who has spent years around the campground, pulled up to the exit and described water he had not seen in a quarter century.
"I pulled up to the bridge where we exit, and the water is running like I've never seen it in 25 years,"
Cano said. Branches and wood were stuck at the bridge and forming something like a dam, he said, and with the high water there was no way over or across.
The surge was not limited to people already in the campground. Kayaker Thomas Herring said he and others had been on the water when conditions changed without much warning.
“The river came up very quickly. A lot of wood moving around. Things quickly got dangerous, so we decided to take out for the day,” Herring said.
Visitor Justin Gallen put the level in plainer terms. It was not extreme flood stage, he said, but high enough to shove a lot of debris around.
That mix of fast water and floating timber is what turned a single-lane exit into a barrier. Trees and branches lodged on the span. Water kept pouring over and around it. Cars could not pass, and neither could the usual response vehicles from the opposite bank.
With the road out closed by water and debris, the immediate problem was not rescue from injury but time, food, and waiting for the creek to fall.
The Coconino County Sheriff’s Office confirmed contact with the campground host and said it was watching the situation. Officials were coordinating with several agencies to get emergency food supplies to the people stuck inside until vehicles could use the bridge again.
Public accounts did not name every agency in the food-drop effort, did not say when the drop would land, and did not give a firm hour when water would drop enough to reopen the span. What they did say was clear enough for families watching from outside: about 65 people were accounted for as stranded, the host was in touch with law enforcement, and no one had been reported hurt.
Oak Creek Canyon is a draw for campers, day visitors, and paddlers for a reason. Steep country and a narrow creek corridor make the scenery. The same layout leaves little margin when overnight rain stacks up and the creek jumps its banks. One bridge in and out is convenience in fair weather. It is a single point of failure when debris jams the deck.
Branch’s group arrived around 5 p.m. to quiet conditions. Overnight rain rewrote the morning. Cano’s long memory of the place still did not match the flow he saw at the exit. Herring’s party quit the water when wood started riding a fast rise. Those timelines match: a normal evening, a hard overnight pulse, a morning with no drive-out.
For now, the practical order of business is the one the sheriff’s office described, keep contact with the host, keep eyes on the water, and feed the people who cannot leave until the creek gives the bridge back.
Flash water in canyon country still makes the schedule, not the other way around, and a single exit is a reminder that plans end where the debris pile starts.
