Columnist Susan Snyder: Navigating a river of ineptitude

Friday, Sept. 1, 2000 | 10:41 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Friday, Sundays and Tuesdays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or 259-4082.

In other places, April showers bring May flowers.

But here, we have August monsoons that bring out the buffoons.

This is the desert. Rain brings flash floods. They are called "flash" floods because the water moves very fast. The west side of the valley is higher than the east side. Water runs downhill. Flash-flood water runs downhill faster.

Pretty much common sense stuff any fourth-grader could figure out. And yet every time it rains, whole carloads of adults are mystified.

And stranded.

"It's really amazing," Clark County Fire Department Spokesman Steve La-Sky said. "We literally do so many calls they aren't even recorded. There are dozens."

They're called fast-water rescues. It's an exciting name for the undignified process of dragging some 200-pound doofus through a car window while muddy flood water swirls just below the door handles.

And fire department rescuers typically render this type of aid to two or three foundering motorists on the way to the original call for help, La-Sky said.

"It's the sheep-herd mentality," he said. "They see the car in front of them go and they think, 'I can make it, too.' It's like lambs to slaughter."

And it gets even stoopider.

"We've been pulling people out of their cars, and people who are watching have still tried to drive through," he said.

It is befuddling to see the number of people who think they are the chosen ones who can "beat" a storm that has been dumping rain half the afternoon.

Heaven forbid the dog would have to eat bologna or wait an hour. No, these people must head to the store and add the old Toyota to the valley's temporary artificial reef program.

"In (Tuesday's) storm we had about 40 people who made bad decisions," said Betty Hollister of the Regional Flood Control District. "This is not a puddle. Flood water is more powerful than an SUV. It is more powerful than a several-ton pickup truck."

For those who have trouble figuring out that moving water is flood water, county crews have devised a complicated, high-tech warning system.

They put up barricades and big signs that warn, "FLOOD WATER AHEAD."

May not sound complicated, but evidently it is. During the last storm, Hollister said, a woman traveling with her children drove around such barricades and signs. Her car was promptly swept off the road.

Hello? Anybody home?

Flood control workers have about 25 years worth of improvements left to make throughout the valley. Until they are finished, residents simply must use their heads.

"It's up to motorists to make responsible decisions and make smart choices," Hollister said.

Be glad for the choice. Arizona drivers who fail to make good decisions pay for them. Hollister called it the "dumb driver law." If you drive around a flood barricade, you will pay for the rescue and the damage to your car. Insurance won't cover it, she said.

"Water is very powerful," Hollister said. "But no matter how many times we tell people, we hear the same frustrations."

Well, it's late summer in the desert.

And buffoon season is in full swing.