VIDEO: An Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) employee is being credited for helping first responders save a teen during the deadly flash floods in Globe last month. The flash floods that began the afternoon of Sept. 26 tore through the Globe-Miami area over multiple days and killed at least three people and left widespread damage to the rural Gila County community.
Karl Lopez, an ADOT lead maintenance technician based in Superior, was one of many trying to assist residents during the floods that first night. He was driving on Jesse Hayes Road on the way to a flooding call outside of Globe when two or three feet of floodwater and a stalled pickup truck blocked the roadway. An ambulance was en route to an severely injured teen boy, but also got stuck at the flooded roadway. The teen was bleeding so badly that a tourniquet had been applied to his arm and sat in the back of a pickup truck on the other side of the flooded road.
โThey said that kid needed to get to the hospital ASAP,โ Lopez said. Lopez used his heavy emergency response truck to attach a chain to the pickup, and towed the truck out of the road. While the truck was out of the road, the water was still too deep for the ambulance to pass through and after about 15 minutes, the water had receded a bit and the ambulance driver was ready.
