Original commentary by Jason Marsteiner. Follow-up researched September 27, 2026.
The Grand Canyon flash flood of August 29, 2026, raises difficult questions about campsite selection, warnings, escape routes, and the decisions made before an emergency. Below is my original Facebook writeup in full, followed by a dated continuation with later reporting and additional lessons.
A note before reading: The original post was written while rescue and search information was still developing. Its early evacuation and missing-person figures describe that moment, not the final outcome. The continuation below updates the confirmed losses, discusses what we now know about the response, and remembers the three men who died.
The canyon image above is an AI-generated educational illustration, not a photograph of the August 2026 disaster. The two illustrations within this article are also clearly labeled.
My Original Grand Canyon Flood Commentary
Update: What We Know Now
Research updated September 27, 2026. The following section continues the original commentary with later information.
When I wrote the post above, families were still waiting for answers and rescuers were working to establish who was missing. We now have a clearer account of the losses and the rescue effort. We also have additional reporting about warnings and damaged equipment. Those developments deserve space here because an early assessment should not remain frozen in time after better information becomes available.
Remembering John Giusti, Brent Rosenkranz, and Timothy Allen Smith
The National Park Service identified John Giusti and Brent Rosenkranz, both of Granbury, Texas, after recovering their bodies. On September 17, later reporting confirmed that remains recovered on September 14 were those of Timothy Allen Smith, the last missing member of their group. Three friends did not come home from this trip.
I extend my sincere condolences to the Giusti, Rosenkranz, and Smith families, their friends, and the people whose lives they touched. For readers, this may be an article about an outdoor emergency. For those who knew these men, it is the loss of someone they expected to see again. No discussion of terrain, equipment, or decision making should lose sight of that.
There is also a responsibility to be careful about what we claim. Knowing the outcome does not tell us exactly what each man knew, where he was when the water arrived, or which escape options remained available to him. The sources linked here do not establish a complete sequence of their final decisions. I will not fill those gaps with assumptions about what they should have done.
What the rescue effort accomplished
The early figure of 62 evacuations in my original post was later superseded. Reporting from the incident command briefing put the total at 82: 45 people evacuated by sunset Saturday and 37 more by Sunday afternoon. Officials also described using permit records and vehicle information to account for people in the affected area.
That work deserves recognition. Getting people out is only one part of a response; establishing who is still out there matters just as much. For our own trips, the practical lesson is to leave accurate plans with someone who will notice an overdue return, keep permits and group details current, and have a reliable way to account for everyone after an evacuation. Those preparations cannot stop a flood, but they can reduce uncertainty when rescuers need answers quickly.
A later September flood added another reminder that danger continues during recovery. In its September 17 update, the National Park Service reported that it had reduced the number of personnel in the canyon as severe weather approached. The remaining crews reached safety before the flood, and no injuries were reported, although temporary water infrastructure was damaged. To me, that is a useful example of reducing exposure before the emergency. The practical lesson is to change the plan while there is still time to act on it.
What later reporting tells us about warnings
In a September 21 SFGATE report, rafter Tim Romano described receiving a satellite warning and changing his group’s plans. The same report said two Park Service gauges and two USGS gauges were destroyed, while officials distinguished those instruments from the broader alert network. That evidence supports neither the claim that nobody was warned nor the claim that the system protected everyone.
My original questions about preparation still matter, but they need specific answers. When was a hazard recognized? What message was sent, to whom, and by what means? When did people actually receive it? What could they do from the places they occupied at that moment? A warning is useful only when it reaches someone in time to support an achievable action. Conversely, a damaged instrument does not, by itself, prove that every other warning channel failed.
The Park Service’s backcountry and river alert guidance explains how visitors can register compatible satellite messaging devices before a trip. It specifically tells users to obtain a confirmation message rather than assume registration succeeded. The same guidance says the system supplements personal awareness and preparedness. Read the current instructions, understand your device, and do not interpret a quiet screen as proof that a drainage is safe.
What went wrong, and what remains unproven
Some failures are visible and documented. The Park Service’s initial damage report described the loss of nearly all footbridges over Bright Angel Creek, along with major trail and infrastructure damage. Routes and structures that people ordinarily rely on were overwhelmed. That is a concrete reason to examine whether an escape plan depends on a single crossing or on ground that can disappear during the same event that forces you to leave.
Assigning responsibility requires more evidence than observing that damage. The reports reviewed for this continuation do not settle whether different closure decisions, warning timing, campsite arrangements, or individual choices would have prevented each death. It is reasonable to ask those questions and expect careful answers. It is not reasonable to present an unanswered question as a proven finding of negligence, or to assume that someone who died ignored a warning.
Clarifying the campsite and seasonal advice
I want to make one part of my original post especially clear: the reference to 15 vertical feet is not a safe-height rule. I described a personal starting preference and immediately noted its limits. Readers should not turn that number into a guarantee. The surrounding watershed, flood history, side drainages, debris, and available escape terrain all matter. A line on a canyon wall shows where water has reached before; it does not place a ceiling on the next flood.
The discussion of moving uphill is also not permission to disregard park closures or establish an unauthorized campsite. If the permitted location and the conditions do not leave you with an acceptable plan, consult current park guidance and reconsider or postpone the trip before entering the hazard. A reservation does not require you to continue when the situation has changed.
Seasonal dates should not become another false guarantee. My original post referred to the usual summer monsoon period. The Park Service’s current alert guidance specifically discusses elevated risk in burned watersheds during July through October and during other heavy-rain events. Check the actual forecast, watershed conditions, and current Grand Canyon status and closures rather than assuming the risk ends on a particular calendar date.
What We Can Learn From This
The purpose of these lessons is to help us make better decisions on future trips. They are not a checklist of things the people who died failed to do. We do not know enough about their circumstances to make that claim. These are the questions I would want someone to work through before entering similar terrain.
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Check the weather for the whole drainage, not just your location. Understand which slopes and tributaries send water toward the creek or canyon you plan to enter. Check forecasts for that upstream area, including any burned watershed. A storm hidden beyond the canyon walls can affect you even while the sky directly overhead remains clear.
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Reassess familiar places after a wildfire. The National Weather Service explains that burned slopes can remain vulnerable to debris flows for years and may need much less rain to produce dangerous runoff. A campsite or route that worked before the fire deserves a fresh assessment. Familiarity should not replace current information.
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Treat a reservation as permission, not a safety guarantee. Read current closures and site-specific guidance before committing to the trip, then reassess conditions when you arrive. If the authorized site does not provide an acceptable plan for the conditions, consult park staff and reconsider the trip. Do not solve that problem by moving into a closed area or establishing an unauthorized campsite.
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Identify an escape route that everyone can actually use. Before settling in, identify higher ground outside the drainage and discuss how each person will reach it. Consider darkness, footing, fatigue, and whether the route depends on a bridge or creek crossing that could fail. Choose a regrouping point and explain how you will account for everyone.
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Set up alerts before the trip and keep watching conditions. Confirm that your alert subscription worked and learn how your device receives messages. Do not wait for an electronic warning when water is rising, debris is moving past, or a roar is building upstream. The Grand Canyon alert system is one source of information, not a guarantee of advance notice.
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Decide when to turn around while you still have options. Agree beforehand on conditions that would cause you to postpone or leave, such as threatening upstream weather or an escape route your group cannot use. A long drive, a hard-to-get permit, and time already invested should not make the decision for you. Give everyone permission to raise a concern before the situation becomes urgent.
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Get people out before worrying about equipment. If flooding threatens, move promptly toward higher ground away from the channel. Do not spend your escape time packing tents, collecting scattered gear, or filming the water. The Park Service’s flash-flood guidance specifically warns against delaying to gather equipment or attempting to enter or cross floodwater.
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Plan for the return route to be blocked. Reaching higher ground does not mean it is safe to head back down or cross the creek. Water can take hours to recede, and damaged trails or bridges may leave you waiting much longer than expected. Carry extra food and water before the trip, leave an itinerary and overdue-response plan with someone reliable, and communicate your location when you can do so safely.
Related Reading on Terrain and Group Decisions
The same problem appears in ordinary navigation decisions. In Should You Follow a River If You Get Lost Hiking?, I examine why a waterway can give you a direction without providing a safe route. A creek, trail, or bridge can be familiar and useful under ordinary conditions while becoming the wrong place to remain during a flood.
Group decisions need the same attention. Why Hiking Groups Fail Long Before Something Goes Wrong looks at the expectations and communication that should be settled before an emergency. Everyone should know that raising a concern is welcome, understand when the group will stop or turn around, and know how people will regroup and be accounted for if immediate movement becomes necessary.
These are lessons we can carry forward without pretending we know every detail of what happened to the people who died. John Giusti, Brent Rosenkranz, and Timothy Allen Smith deserve to be remembered as people, not reduced to examples in a safety discussion. My hope is that a careful, honest examination of this flood helps someone make an earlier decision, recognize a deteriorating situation, or leave while there is still time.
About the Author
Jason Marsteiner is the founder and lead instructor at The Survival University in Colorado. He writes about practical wilderness skills, preparation, and backcountry decision making.
Several people have tagged me in the Grand Canyon flash-flood story, probably because they are hoping I can provide some teaching points about what happened. Part of this incident demonstrates something I teach repeatedly in our Standard Survival classes when I talk about site selection and choosing a campsite.
Site selection can seem like one of the more boring and mundane parts of survival training because nothing dramatic is happening while you evaluate flood channels, widowmakers hanging overhead, sun exposure, prevailing winds, natural barriers, insect populations and the many other hazards and details that can make one location safer than another. But events like this demonstrate why I teach it so thoroughly. Where you place your shelter can determine whether you ever get the opportunity to use any of the more exciting survival skills people came to learn.
Coming only days after the catastrophic flooding along the Nepal–Tibet border, this story will understandably bring that disaster to mind. I am not comparing the two events. They are really incomparable because of the sheer scale of the glacier event. The destruction and loss of life in the Himalayas are on an entirely different scale, and the full human toll is still being established. I have been watching and examining that catastrophe and may write about it separately when we know more. But that event was so large that it was nearly unsurvivable, and there is very little for me to teach there. Survival largely came down to where people happened to be standing when it occurred. There was little more they could have done. It is truly heartbreaking that a place people travel to for peace, beauty and spiritual reflection became the setting of such tremendous loss. My heart is with the families, the survivors and everyone still waiting for answers.
What happened in Bright Angel Canyon
This post is about the much smaller Grand Canyon flood because it offers several immediate and practical survival lessons. At approximately 2:30 Saturday afternoon, August 29, Bright Angel Creek at the bottom of Grand Canyon changed from a peaceful waterway into a debris-filled flood. Campers at Bright Angel Campground were ordered to run through deep mud toward higher ground while an estimated 15-foot surge tore through the area behind them.
Coolers, grills, structures and even an excavator were reportedly carried downstream. Nearly every footbridge across Bright Angel Creek was destroyed. Trails, utilities and the Transcanyon Waterline suffered extensive damage as boulders, trees and pieces of metal were swept into the Colorado River. At least 62 people were evacuated. One man was found dead near Crystal Rapids, and approximately 15 people remained missing or unaccounted for as officials attempted to determine who had been inside the affected corridor.
Bright Angel Creek drops approximately 6,000 feet from below the North Rim, through Bright Angel Canyon and into the Colorado River near Phantom Ranch. The North Kaibab Trail follows that drainage through much of the canyon, including an extremely narrow section called the Box. Bright Angel Campground sits beside the creek near Phantom Ranch, while Cottonwood Campground is farther upstream. There is no road into this area. People reach it on foot, by mule or from the Colorado River.
Upstream weather and the Dragon Bravo burn scar
Between half an inch and one inch of rain reportedly fell across portions of that steep watershed in approximately 30 minutes. That may not sound extraordinary until you understand what the terrain does with it. Rain falling across miles of slopes, washes and side canyons is collected and funneled into one narrow drainage. It may not be raining at your campsite at all. The storm that kills you can be miles upstream beneath a sky you cannot even see.
The enormous Dragon Bravo Fire had also burned portions of this watershed in 2025. Wildfire removes vegetation that slows runoff and holds soil in place. Intense heat can alter the ground so that it repels water instead of absorbing it. Rain then races downhill, collecting ash, mud, rocks, trees and anything else gravity and water can move.
This is why drought and flash flooding are not opposites. Dry ground can create a false sense of security while absorbing very little water. Add a concentrated monsoon storm over a burn scar and a quiet creek can become a moving wall of water and debris within minutes.
People have a remarkable ability to believe that disasters happen to someone else. That is generally called optimism bias. Normalcy bias is what happens when conditions begin changing and we convince ourselves that everything is probably still fine. Repeatedly camping beside a creek without incident can also create complacency. The water stayed where it belonged the last hundred nights, so we begin treating the hundred-and-first night as guaranteed. It is not.
Designated campsites, warnings, and responsibility
That brings me to an uncomfortable part of this incident. Bright Angel and Cottonwood are designated National Park Service campgrounds. Visitors are required to use authorized campsites. They cannot simply wander uphill and establish a new camp wherever the terrain appears safer.
That matters because people naturally assume an officially designated campsite has been evaluated and found reasonably safe. A permit, reservation and numbered campsite communicate more than permission. They communicate institutional confidence.
The Park Service already knew that the Dragon Bravo burn scar had increased the danger of flash flooding. After the fire, the agency discussed stream gauges, enhanced flood detection, evacuation planning and additional visitor warnings before reopening the affected corridor. I do not yet know whether those systems worked, failed, could not provide enough warning or whether adequate warnings were issued and simply ignored. I know people walk past warning signs all the time because they convince themselves the message is intended for someone less experienced, less capable or less careful than they are. That possibility needs to remain on the table. A disaster occurring does not automatically mean no warning was provided, just as posting a warning does not automatically mean everything reasonably possible was done.
The rangers who recognized the danger, ordered people toward higher ground and helped coordinate the helicopter evacuation deserve credit. Their actions may be the reason this story was not considerably worse. But a successful emergency response does not automatically mean the decisions made before the emergency were adequate. If campers had to run through deep mud with a 15-foot wall of debris approaching, it is entirely reasonable to question whether the existing safeguards were sufficient or whether warnings were simply ignored by some visitors.
During peak monsoon conditions following a major watershed fire, no agency can eliminate every natural hazard, manufacture high ground or guarantee that every campsite will have a viable escape route. People still need to evaluate the conditions and make their own judgment calls. The Park Service’s responsibility is to provide current and specific information so those decisions are informed. That may include warnings attached to permits and reservations, alerts posted online, prominent signs at trailheads and campgrounds and direct warnings from rangers when they are present. Rangers stationed inside the canyon should personally warn nearby visitors when they learn that conditions are deteriorating, but they cannot be everywhere along the corridor at once. If an area has limited escape options once flooding begins, that needs to be stated plainly before visitors enter it or settle in for the night. After that, people need to read the warnings, take them seriously and decide whether continuing is a risk they are willing to accept.
Choosing terrain before the emergency
Now we get into what individuals can control. Nearly everyone wants the campsite closest to the water. People fight over the beautiful spot beside the creek because it offers the best view, easy access to water and that peaceful sound everyone wants to fall asleep beside. Meanwhile, I am usually looking for the inconvenient site farther away and uphill that nobody else wants. That is frequently the safest campsite available.
As pleasant as it may be, I do not want to sleep beside the water. I want to walk down when I need it and then return to camp. I prefer my sleeping area to be outside the active channel, above the surrounding floodplain and at least 15 vertical feet above the normal waterline whenever the terrain allows it. Even that is only a starting point. This flood reportedly produced a surge approximately that high. Fifteen feet is not a magical number, and elevation alone cannot protect you if the terrain funnels the flow directly toward you. Higher and farther away is better.
Before establishing camp, look for water stains on canyon walls, debris lines, exposed roots, scoured soil, flattened vegetation and branches lodged unusually high in trees. If driftwood is caught in a tree ten feet above your head, the water has already demonstrated that it can reach that location. Believe the evidence.
Distance from the creek is not enough. A campsite can be hundreds of feet from visible water and still sit inside a floodplain, dry wash, side drainage or alluvial fan. Avoid the mouths of side canyons and tributaries because they can launch a debris flow directly into your camp. Avoid low terraces, constricted channels and the outside of sharp bends where moving water concentrates its force.
This happened during the Southwest monsoon. Grand Canyon warns that severe thunderstorms and flash flooding are especially concerning from July through the middle of September. Anyone entering a canyon during that period should be checking upstream weather, flood watches, recent wildfire history and escape options before descending.
If thunderstorms are building upstream, heavy rain is predicted over a burn scar or a flood watch is active, postponing the trip is not cowardice. It is risk management. Once you are deep inside a canyon, the decision window can become brutally short.
Recognizing the warning signs and leaving in time
Warning signs include thunder or dark clouds upstream, clear water suddenly turning brown, a rapid rise in the creek, sticks and debris beginning to float past, dry side channels starting to flow, waterfalls appearing on canyon walls or a growing roar coming from somewhere upstream.
If you notice those signs, leave immediately. Do not pack your tent. Do not organize your equipment. Do not stand beside the creek recording the approaching flood. Grab the people with you, move uphill and get out of the drainage. If you have a small emergency pack already prepared and within reach, take it without delaying your escape. It should contain rain gear, a trauma or first-aid kit, water, calorie-dense food, essential medications, a waterproof fire starter, a headlamp and at least one signaling or communication device such as a whistle, signal mirror or satellite communicator. If you have to search for those items or pack them while the water is coming, leave them. Equipment can be replaced.
Every camp in potentially flood-prone terrain should have an escape plan before anyone goes to sleep. Identify the route to high ground during daylight and keep your shoes and emergency pack immediately accessible. Establish a rally point and a method of accounting for everyone. Nobody becomes better at navigating or making decisions at night, in pouring rain, while people are panicking.
Do not assume a bridge is high ground. A bridge crosses the exact channel carrying the flood. It can collect trees and debris, become a choke point and fail without warning. If your entire escape plan depends upon one bridge remaining intact, you do not have an adequate escape plan.
Why swimming is not an escape plan
You also cannot count on swimming through something like this. People imagine floodwater as a deeper and faster version of a swimming pool. A debris flow is water carrying an avalanche. It contains rocks, logs, branches, twisted metal, pieces of buildings, mud and sludge. You can be struck, buried, pinned against something or pulled beneath the debris before completing two swimming strokes.
The water is muddy, violently turbulent and impossible to see through. You cannot see the ground beneath you, identify anything stable to push against or know what debris is coming toward you. This is not something you defeat by being a strong swimmer. Your survival decision needs to happen before you enter that water. Move uphill, remain there and remember that flash floods can arrive in multiple surges.
Learning without blaming the victims
None of this is an invitation to casually blame the campers. They were using officially designated sites, and we do not yet know what warnings they received, what choices were available or how quickly the situation deteriorated.
Survival is rarely about performing some extraordinary stunt after everything has already gone wrong. More often, it comes down to making a boring and inconvenient decision several hours earlier. Walk farther for water. Choose the campsite nobody else wants. Leave the canyon when conditions deteriorate. Abandon the equipment when it is time to move.
People believe it will not happen to them, right up until it does. Terrain selection is an emergency decision made before the emergency exists. Choose high ground, understand the watershed, watch the weather upstream and always know exactly how you are getting out.