FLAGSTAFF, AZ — The Flagstaff community is helping donate labor and supplies to build a wall around a home that has seen repeated flash floods during monsoon season.
Anissa Doten lives in the Mt. Elden Estates neighborhood that was hit by multiple flash floods in the summer of 2021 because of heavy rains that fell on the burn scars from the Museum Fire.
ABC15 first met Anissa in August of 2021 while working on a story about her concerns about the repeated floods. While we were there, a heavy storm moved through and our cameras captured the terrifying floods.
Anissa and most of her neighbors along Grandview Drive have relied on sandbags to protect their homes and properties. Outside of Anissa’s house, the wall was around six feet tall at the time.
The Mt. Elden Estates neighborhoods and those south of them saw four flash flooding events down the burn scars in 2021.
Photos and videos of those flash floods have been hard for Anissa. “It’s just always so emotional,” she said. “It just immediately takes you back to that spot where you just felt so vulnerable and so helpless.”
There are around 400 homes and 35 businesses that are in the Museum Flood area. In 2021, dozens of those properties flooded as a result of heavy storm systems.
The City of Flagstaff is working on a series of projects that will help mitigate the flash flooding, but officials can only do work on public lands.
When it comes to people’s properties, the homeowner is responsible for protecting their homes.
For the past two years, Anissa and her children have lived in a rental home until they were able to make changes to the exterior of the home.
The community and businesses have come together to donate labor and supplies to build a three-foot landscape wall around her house that will be completed before this upcoming monsoon season.
“You are not allowed to build a flood wall, not allowed to do any flood mitigation,” said Meagan Elliott, with Showtime Dirt Works.
The wall is estimated at over $80,000 because of how deep into the ground the wall will be built.
“We will be doing all the actual work,” said Elliott. “We were able to go to businesses within the community that we have relationships with such as Cemexm Blocklight, Flagstaff Landscape Products, so many companies who donated materials for us [to use].”
Along with the wall, if a flash flood were to occur, Anissa would be able to add steel panels behind the wall.
Anissa had to work with the City of Flagstaff for a permit, and approval for her plans.
“It's going to be very deep footing so that it can be stronger and it’s going to be two layers thick,” Elliott added. “So rather than just one layer of a true landscape wall, it will actually be two layers and backfilled in between.”
Showtime Dirt Works and others are also helping build a new way to enter her home through the backyard since the permanent wall prevent access to the front of the house.
“A new driveway utilizing the city access easement will provide year-round ADA access for her family. Additionally, the garage -- a prior weak point that allowed flood water in -- will be walled off. This will eliminate the garage but make the house much less vulnerable to future possible floods,” according to a fundraiser online.
The fundraiser hopes to help recuperate some of the costs for the small businesses that have donated time and materials.
Anissa and her family have started the process of moving back in already.
“We’ve just been so super blessed by so much help, and we wouldn’t have been able to get back into the house without all the support from the community,” she said.
If you're interested in helping with donations toward the small businesses involved, click here.
