How to Survive a Flash Flood

A flash flood, true to its name, is a flood that occurs in a flash. The cause is usually a cloudburst - a predictable, but maverick, rainstorm - that suddenly fills low-lying creeks, rivers, canyons, road dips, and culverts. Minutes or hours before, the terrain is dry. Then water from sudden local rains or, more frequently, from an unseen downpour far upstream, rampages where before there was little or no water - and no apparent danger.

A flash flood's herculean torrents are capable of carrying heavy cars, campers, and trucks to their destruction. They seemingly appear from nowhere and cascade across roads, sweep over low-slung bridges, thunder down canyons, and inundate every low-lying path, including streets, rural roads, county roads, and older highways (those roads are not engineered to prevent flash flooding).

Annually, flash floods kill more Americans than any other natural hazard, including hurricanes and tornadoes. According to statistics compiled by Richard Addison Wood, a former head of the National Weather Service's Disaster Preparedness and Awareness Program, more than half of the approximately 160 annual flash-flood fatalities are drivers, most of them swept to their deaths in cars while attempting to cross a flooded road dip, a wash, or a low-bridged stream or culvert.

No state or region is immune to flash-flood casualties. And whereas the Plains States and those across the desert West are most prone to flash flooding, Wood's survey of flash-flood deaths between 1945 and 1987 put Kentucky at the top of the fatalities list, followed closely by Texas, Mississippi, West Virginia, Missouri, Ohio, and Illinois.

What to Do

Before setting out:

n to drive on an unfamiliar road, listen to a road and weather report first. Local radio stations usually broadcast flash-flood alerts supplied by the National Weather Service.

2 - Don't drive at night on unfamiliar roads during a flash-flood alert. Even if there is no alert, confine your driving to the daytime if the region you plan to drive through is prone to flash floods. In daylight, you can often see the danger before you are upon it; at night, you seldom can.

If you drive at night in a region of frequent flash floods, or after a flash flood alert:

1 - Drive at reduced speed so as not to outrun your headlights. You need to be able to see the road, as well as possible flood-prone washes, road dips, culverts, ravines, and canyons ahead.

2 - Keep the radio tuned to local weather reports. If you hear a flash-flood alert, be especially cautious. If you observe threatening clouds or lightning anywhere around you, even at a great distance, double your caution. Distant rainstorms are the source of many flash floods.

While driving anytime on flood-prone roads:

1 - If you observe water flowing or even beginning to puddle across your way, stop immediately.

2 - Do not attempt to cross any flooded stretch of road. What may appear to be a crossing you can ford may conceal dips, mud holes, or washouts with water several feet deep. (A car can be carried away in less than two feet of water.) 3. Wait for the flood to recede. Many flash floods are short-lived. Even so, risk no crossing of a recently flooded stretch until you have gotten out of the car and carefully studied the roadway. There have been cases where impatient drivers, beheving the way clear, have attempted to cross roads only to be mired in mud, and, moments later, hit by a second flash flood.

If caught in a flash flood:

1 - If you are driving too fast to stop short of the flood or too close for effective braking, in the split second before you hit the water try to steer upstream rather than letting the car get hit broadside and be rolled over.

2 - If your car is carried downstream, stay inside. It is safer than trying to jump from the car into a likely raging current. Stoutly seatbelted, you have the best chance of riding out what, usually, is a flood of short, perhaps only a few minutes, duration.

3 - If at night, keep the headlights on as an aid to possible rescuers. Daytimes, for the same reason, keep your horn blowing.

4 - But suppose your vehicle broadsides in the current, even rolls over? This is more likely to happen to small, lightweight vehicles. Some of today's larger SUVs can withstand some of the worst of flash floods without major damage or rollover.

Whatever the vehicle, however, the often saving grace is the short-lived nature of most flash floods. As their name implies, they often occur in a flash and subside almost as quickly. That's why survival may depend on staying seat belted within the vehicle, even if it's broadsided and even should it roll over.