By Steve Segner
Sedona, AZ — I’ve been getting a lot of emails asking how we’re doing, so I thought I’d sit down and do what I always do: turn this weekend’s adventure into a story.
First, the good news: El Portal, our hotel, sits on high ground and weathered the storm with just a few new leaks and no serious flooding. Just below us, Tlaquepaque dodged a bullet. It had some water damage and flooding in the parking lot, but things could have been much worse.
Around 5 a.m. Sunday morning, I was on my way to work, coming down the driveway, when a wall of water stopped me—at least five feet above the low-water crossing on Thompson Road.
Well, okay. Looks like I’d be spending the day or two at home
Easy to say. Terrifying to contemplate.
Don’t get me wrong—we have a nice home. I’m just not a stay-at-home person. I haven’t willingly stayed home for a full day since high school—or maybe even junior high.
For one brief moment, I considered joining Netflix and binge-watching something. Thank God I came to my senses.
I retreated inside to prepare for what would be the longest day of my life.
Gazing out the kitchen window at Munds Creek below, I saw water higher than I’d ever seen it. Munds Creek drains Flagstaff and meets Oak Creek just below our low-water crossing. Our home sits between the two, about 100 feet above both. Before long, people began gathering and wandering around, like something out of a 1960s zombie movie. Small groups formed and drifted back and forth on the road below our home.
I walked back down the road toward Oak Creek and, lo and behold, about 30 people were staring at the place where the bridge used to be. It was now hidden beneath seven or eight feet of churning water.
Along our little road, lined with a mix of new and older homes going back as far as the 1940s, plenty of Airbnbs and tiny homes for nightly rental. Some have kitchens; some don’t. Some had lost power. The scene reminded me of the TV program “Lost”: a milling crowd trying to figure out just what the heck had happened.
No food. No electricity. Missed flights home. Rental cars to return to the airport.
I explained that no one was going home that day—or the next. And that was even before Oak Creek reached its peak, 12 feet above the bridge.
The locals jumped in to help the stranded Airbnb guests. Locals headed home to see what the pantry had to offer.
In our case, the pantry wasn’t exactly a gourmet’s dream. Connie and I seldom eat at home. Like many people our age, we go from the Hudson to the Wild and other local diners each night and split a happy-hour meal. Our pantry reflected that lifestyle: three cans of chopped tomatoes, one can of five-year-old Spam, chips and salsa, six packs of Kraft noodles (thank goodness), assorted pasta, and several cans of beans and olives, no beer or wine.
In the deep freeze: a three-year-old frozen pizza and five bags of green beans.
Put it all together, and you’ve got the makings of stone soup. Enough for at least three days, anyway.
We invited three stranded Airbnb guests to dinner. They’d missed their flights and had no food. We sat around our kitchen table and talked about everything from science to art to a little politics. It made for a truly memorable evening.
You would have been proud of how the community stepped up to help. Deep down, I think we’re all socialists when the chips are down. Our hunter-gatherer instincts kick in, and we work together to get through it.
I spent Monday working the phones. By day’s end, we’d found a contractor and a backhoe operator willing to come up and try to clear the debris packed beneath the bridge. The blockage had created a small lake upstream, keeping the water unusually high and the road impassable.
For several hours, stranded residents and visitors watched in disbelief as the operator freed trapped boulders and debris, slowly clearing the way. It was something to see: a skilled operator working the jaws of that giant machine with a lifetime’s worth of experience. The bystanders were mesmerized. That kind of know-how won’t be replaced by AI anytime soon.
When the water finally started to retreat, our hopes faded. The flood had torn away a 20-by-20-foot slab of concrete, eight inches thick, and scoured out a huge, four-foot-deep hole in the pad leading to the bridge’s east entrance from 89A.
So: more phone calls. Actually, several. I ordered a dump truck to go to Camp Verde for a load of fill, hoping to fill the hole and make the road passable for cars.
Around 3 on Tuesday, the sinkhole was filled and the gravel compacted. Then, in what felt like an instant, about 20 carloads of people made their way through.
You would have been proud of the way the community came together. Again, our hunter-gatherer instincts kicked in: people pitched in, shared what they had, and helped one another through a rough day.
I learned a lot about myself that weekend. The siren call of retirement, the reclining chair, and binge-watching Netflix? Not for me. Three days at home is enough to last me a lifetime.
The 2026 flood caused millions of dollars in damage, but it also brought something else: a renewed sense of community. Later that night, the big Blue Wave struck America.
Sedona is mystical and magical—and this weekend, it proved it.
Anyone interested in helping the locals recover from the flood of 26 and rebuild the low water crossing please go to www.fixourbridge the low est is around $35,000.00 at this point
Steve Segner
