By AUSTIN FENNER and JEANE MacINTOSH with AP
Last updated: 7:59 am
August 20, 2008
Posted: 3:52 am
August 20, 2008
A brave group of New Jersey Boy Scouts rescued by Indians from flash floods that tore through their Grand Canyon campsite will be back in the arms of their thankful parents today, relatives said.
PHOTO GALLERY: Rescue At Havasu Falls
"I'm relieved and excited the kids will be home soon," said Maplewood mom Eileen Muench, whose husband, Kevin, and two boys, Tommy, 10, and Colin, 13, were among those plucked from danger Sunday after a dam burst and turned their Arizona campground into a roiling river.
The Muench family was among the six Scouts and three adult Scout leaders from Maplewood Troop 21 evacuated by a Black Hawk helicopter after torrential rains set off the freak flooding.
"There will be a lot of hugs and kisses - and probably some laundry to be done," said Scout mom Bridget Lai, whose husband, Michael, and son Kyle, an eighth grader, were also on the trip.
The happy homecoming follows a wild and life-threatening adventure. It began when a dam near the gorge where Troop 21 had been camped in the famed National Park gave way early Sunday.
Kevin Muench, a dentist and avid outdoorsman, told his wife the troop and other campers in the area had been warned to expect as much as two feet of water when the rains began. It turned out to be a raging torrent rising more than 15 feet.
Late Saturday, rangers told the campers to move to higher ground. By 1 a.m. Sunday, Kevin Muench said, "They woke everyone up, saying floodwaters were coming."
The coolheaded troop - along with a group of college students and a vacationing family - soon found themselves on a small patch of land, climbing the trees to escape the rising water.
"The scariest thing [was] you could hear the trees snapping and breaking," Kevin Muench told ABC News, noting that whole trees and massive boulders were being carried downstream.
"We had become an island. There was water to the left and right of us."
Eileen Muench said the group was saved by a temporary logjam in the floodwater, which allowed them an opportunity to cross the raging waters. The college students threw the younger kids over their shoulders.
With the water just three feet away, four members of the Havasupai Indian tribe then came to the rescue, dropping rope from a 20-foot high cliff so the group could climb to safety.
Another few feet, and everyone "would've been underwater," Muench said.
A Black Hawk helicopter was then dispatched to carry Troop 21 to safety.
"They couldn't have gotten out without the help of other campers," Eileen Muench said. "When they were safe and looked back at the island where they'd just been, it was gone."
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