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At around 6:20 a.m. Friday morning, a Flagstaff Unified School District school bus was on its way to pick up students when Slayton Ranch Road collapsed.

The bus driver said she was just a few yards away from the very first stop, driving slowly over the icy Doney Park road. She felt the rear end of the bus drop and was immediately startled.

There were no children onboard, and the driver was able to exit the vehicle safely. The road beneath the rear wheels started to crumble away, leaving about a foot of the bus’s frame to hold it on the remaining pavement on the south side of Slayton Ranch Road.

The road collapse was caused by extreme flows in the Rio De Flag, which overwhelmed and eroded the soil around two metal culverts that ran underneath Slayton Road. Following a season of record snowfall, flows in the Rio de Flag have been elevated by rapid and widespread snowmelt across the Flagstaff area.

As the water rushed by after the collapse, it continued to erode the pavement, and large chunks broke off into a stream traveling west under the bus, barrelling through a white fence, corral panels and still more Doney Park property downstream.

Dave Fritzche lives on Slayton Ranch Road and said he’d seen the road take on water on Thursday night.

“The water was running over the road and cutting it out. Then it slowly ate it away,� he said.

Fritzche’s property was beginning to become waterlogged, and his family was out at 9 p.m. Thursday building sandbag walls. When he saw the water change course, he noticed the road collapse and the stranded bus.

Another Slayton Road resident, Jim Herre, said he saw the road collapse just after 6 a.m.

“It was not the driver’s fault,� Herre said, describing how erosion from the flowing water had created a “false bridge� over the road.

Herre also noted that seeing water run through drainages in the area was a rarity.

“I have not had water in my Rio de Flag since 2005,� he said.

Deputies with the Coconino County Sheriff’s Department arrived on the scene at about 6:30 a.m. on Friday and set up cones to restrict access to the area.

Deputy Chris Smolinski told the Arizona Daily Sun that, as of press time, the road was closed except to local traffic.

According to a county release, residents on the north side of the wash may use Neptune Road to access Silver Saddle Road, while residents on the south side of the wash should use Townsend-Winona Road.

A crew from Jett Towing arrived to help free the stranded bus, speculating that the vehicle might be totaled as a result of damage to the axle from impact with the remaining road. They brought in material to backfill the road where it had collapsed in order to hedge against further erosion as they suspended the bus’s rear end by crane and drove it forward onto a tow trailer.

Rescuing the bus went “as smooth as it could have,� said Sean Dziedzic of Jett Towing. “We were all worried about that road caving in and washing away more.�

By about 11 a.m. the bus had been successfully towed. The bus driver, who came out of retirement recently when the district expressed a need for bus drivers, expressed her gratitude that there weren’t any children onboard and wished only that the road had been closed when the flooding began.

Coconino County Public Works has closed Slayton Ranch Road indefinitely while it assesses the damage and determines steps forward in making repairs.

“We’re mobilizing now to put up larger signs at the Townsend-Winona entrance as well as the Doney Park location. We’re going to put up some major barricades,� said Andy Bertelsen, county deputy manager.

They recommend residents use Neptune Road to access Silver Saddle Road on the north side of the wash, and that residents on south side take Slayton Ranch Road to Townsend-Winona.

Waterlines at the location were all but submerged, exposed between rolling waves and the crumbling pavement. Doney Park water crews were on-site to keep an eye on the situation, and an employee stood near the meter to shut off the lines in the event of a break.

Neighbors on site expressed their concern for people farther downstream and said this was an unexpected and shocking side effect of the flooding many have already been dealing with for much of the week.

Coconino County engineer Christopher Tressler said the county was acting fast to understand the full range of risk posed by this season’s snowmelt.

“Public safety is really important to us,� he said. “We're conducting rapid assessments of all the county crossings of washes that are seeing spring runoff and snowmelt runoff.�

Tressler said the assessments will be used to identify necessary improvements in the area, including a potential upsizing of the culvert beneath Slayton Ranch Road. In his estimation, a full repair of the road could be 60 to 90 days out � a timeline commensurate with the jurisdictional complexity of the waterway.

“Some things are outside of the county's control,� he said. “This is the Rio de Flag, so this waterway is influenced by decisions of the Army Corps of Engineers. It goes to the state level and the federal level as well.�

Bertelsen added that the county is now monitoring all of the places where the Rio de Flag crosses over or might overwhelm culverts and roads.

“We have ponding as well at Hutton Ranch Road,� Bertelsen said. “Even in Flagstaff, the Rio de Flag is flowing heavily through town. Fort Valley as well, as the Rio de Flag flows through our community, the extreme ponding that we have in Fort Valley that threatens people’s homes and outbuildings.�

He described the county as a “heavily saturated area� as snow continues to melt and the region receives additional precipitation.

At the same time that crews were rescuing the bus at Slayton Ranch Road, county public works personnel took up stations downstream to evaluate flows over Hutton Ranch Road.

There, ponding had begun to overtop the road from the west, flowing at a height of about an inch. While the water was not particularly deep, erosion had begun to cut foot-long gouges into the east side of the road, where the water descended to meet its original flow path.

The road’s integrity remained relatively uncompromised, however, and by noon county public works crews had dropped and graded a fresh layer of material, effectively stopping the flow and repairing the eroded section of the road.

Longtime resident Roy Van Horn was driving down Hutton Ranch Road to check on a friend at the time the county was performing the repairs. He said he hadn’t seen snowmelt of this magnitude since 1979.

“Water is the most powerful force in nature,� Van Horn said. “It can’t be stopped and it will take everything in its path, no lie.�

Back on Slayton Ranch Road, County Manager Steve Peru corroborated the observation that the water responsible for Friday’s road damage was an anomaly.

“The flows in that area have historically been limited to none,� he said.

The supervisor said he was in a meeting when he heard about the bus’s situation and arrived at the scene after 7:15 a.m.

From the north side of the road, Peru was able to see the bus straddling the banks of a rushing Rio. He described the scene as an “extreme example� of the impacts of the record-breaking weather events affecting the 18,000-square-mile county.

As of Friday, the National Weather Service reported that Flagstaff had received 159.2 inches of snow � the fifth-highest amount in over a century of record keeping.

“It has been a challenging time for everyone. We appreciate the patience and fortitude of everyone in our county. I think we’re all just ready for a break,� Peru said.