Flash flood hit sleeping campers near popular waterfall. California man came to the rescue
Justin Corley thought he was going on vacation last week when he and his family left their Clovis home bound for spectacular hiking near Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona.
The Kern County Fire Department captain instead found himself in the middle of another emergency.
As he and his wife, son, and mother slept in tents near the popular and exclusive Havasu Falls in the Native American Havasupai Reservation on Thanksgiving night, rain caused the river beside their campsite to rise.
Corley and his family awoke around 3 a.m. to find themselves lying in six inches of water in the midst of a flash flood.
They moved to higher ground, then Corley and his 17-year-old son, Ethan, went looking for people to help.
Flash flood rescue in Havasu Canyon
Corley and Ethan trudged through several feet of water in the dark of night to wake up sleeping campers along Havasu Creek between Havasu Falls and Mooney Falls in Havasu Canyon. The stream is a tributary of the Colorado River.
There were some close calls. In one instance, Corley unzipped a tent with mud pushed halfway up its sides to find two girls still sleeping inside.
Corley’s quick actions helped ensure no one was swept down the river.
He also walked four miles round-trip to a ranger station to get more help, and came to the aid of two stranded groups: 18 people on an island in the middle of a raging Havasu Creek, and 30 to 40 on the opposite riverbank.
Corley helped the people stuck on the riverbank find a crossing – a couple logs laying over the river that had been submerged. The logs led people to an island. They then crossed a second makeshift footbridge that was swept away and reinstalled by another man, with help from Corley.
The other stranded group of 18 was stuck on another island. It had been accessible by footbridges before the flash flood washed away those paths. A rescue team from the local tribe arrived in the daytime of Nov. 29 to help. The water had receded enough by then to walk a rope across the river, which was used to start guiding people across. Corley, who is trained in swift water rescue, went over to the island to walk back with a man who had injured his shoulder. That was the only injury Corley was aware of that day.
The flash flood rescue made national headlines.
Some rescued campers spent the following night in the village of Supai two miles away, which is inaccessible to vehicles. Others – including Corley; Ethan; Corley’s mother, Debbie Jacks; and Corley’s wife, Dawn Corley, a teacher at Clovis High School – camped that night at higher ground, trying to dry out clothes and sleeping bags to stay warm until it was safe to leave. They trekked 10 miles back to the trailhead the next day, the Saturday after Thanksgiving.
Their good vacation deeds didn’t end there. Back at the parking lot, they found another couple’s vehicle damaged by falling rocks, so the Corleys gave those fellow campers a ride to a nearby city.
Thanking a ‘selfless and honorable man’
A fellow camper later posted a photo of Corley in a Havasupai Facebook group to “thank this guy.”
Mandy Augustin didn’t then know his name, but she knew he had done a lot to help her and others.
Others shared their thanks in a long string of comments:
“Legend,” one man wrote. “He came by our camp too.”
“Yes, he ran to our tent just as the water was hitting us,” one woman wrote.
“Thank you Justin so much for leading us to safety!” another woman wrote. “Even helping me carry one of my bags as I crossed to the other side and needed to hold the rope for safety. Selfless and honorable man.”
The comments also included thanks for Corley’s family who helped get people dry and warm.
Corley responded to the messages.
“I am not a hero and did not save anyone,” he wrote. “Everyone should take credit for getting themselves out, I think of it as supervised self rescue.”
Augustin thinks what he did went beyond that.
“I realize that being humble comes with the territory of being a first responder,” Augustin said, “but he and his family were an integral part of ensuring the safety and comfort of so many during and after the flash flood. … Justin was soaked and his boots were heavily waterlogged, but that didn’t stop him. He checked with each group, and moved to the next. It was later that we found out that he trekked to the village to notify them of the circumstances at the campground, which made rescues much more timely.
“In a scary situation like this – made scarier by the fact it happened in the middle of the night – I feel like self preservation is instinctual. Many, many people are thankful that Justin and his family were so quick to spring into action.”
This story was originally published December 6, 2019 at 10:19 AM with the headline "Flash flood hit sleeping campers near popular waterfall. California man came to the rescue."
