Killer rains swamp Las Vegas

Angie Wagner

Friday, July 9, 1999 | 10:05 a.m.

A powerful summer storm transformed this simmering desert city into a raging river that swamped hundreds of cars, smashed mobile homes and killed at least two people.

"It's a wide strip of devastation," Gov. Kenny Guinn said after taking a helicopter tour of flooded areas Thursday evening, when the water finally started to recede.

Las Vegas isn't used to this kind of downpour, with 3 inches falling in just a few hours Thursday. The Las Vegas area usually receives slightly more than 4 inches in an entire year.

The National Weather Service placed the Las Vegas Valley under a flash flood watch until 9 p.m. PDT, warning of the possibility of more heavy rain later today.

Ron McQueen, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said it was the city's worst flooding in 15 years: Water turned parts of Interstate 15 into a lake, many intersections were under water much of the day and firefighters rescued stranded motorists from their waterlogged cars before the water receded Thursday evening.

"It was picking up cars and throwing them around like toothpicks," said Robert Anderson, who watched as his neighbor's mobile home was swept away. "It was a huge double-wide and it just went into the water and it just disintegrated."

Clark County Fire Department spokesman Steve La-Sky said hundreds of cars were trapped in high water and at least three mobile homes had been lost.

The rain appeared to have led to the deaths of two people, a man whose body was found in a flood channel and a woman who died in a traffic accident, officials said.

Tourists sought shelter in the casinos along the famed Strip.

"The Strip is a lake, up over the curbs, into our fountains," said Phil Cooper, spokesman for Caesars Palace hotel-casino.

Part of the casino was closed, but was to reopen this morning.

Flights at McCarran International Airport were shut down for 45 minutes, and two planes were diverted to Los Angeles, airport spokeswoman Cynthia Markson said.

"It's a nightmare. It's one of the worst things I've ever seen," said Nevada Highway Patrol spokesman Scott Flabi.

The flooding could have been much worse if not for a flood control program that was initiated in 1987 and has cost $400 million to date.

"I can't begin to estimate what would have happened if these flood controls were not in place," Gale Fraser, general manager of the Clark County Regional Flood Control District, said today. "I know it would have been a lot worse."

The system is made up of huge detention basins that capture flood water and control the release eastward across the valley into Lake Mead.

The system will cost another $1 billion to complete over the next 25 years.

Motorists who spent Thursday navigating flooded streets faced a manmade problem today. The Nevada Department of Transportation went ahead with a previously-planned demolition of a major overpass over Interstate 15 on the north side of the city, blocking the highway and diverting traffic in one of the busiest areas of town.

Gilles Bloch, a tourist from France who watched the flooding from his hotel room at the Sahara hotel-casino, described the city: "Looking out the window, it looked like a beautiful woman who had been crying, and all the makeup was running down her face. That's Las Vegas today."

Meanwhile, in California, monsoon rains flooded roadways and fields in southern parts of the state, sending children into the streets of Hemet for improvisational surfing on water boards tied behind pickup trucks.