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Flash Floods and Desert Washes: Six Inches Is Enough
Published September 17, 2026 · 4 min read
If someone has been swept into moving water, call 911. Do not go in after them. Rescuers who become casualties are a well-documented pattern, and a second person in the water makes the first person harder to save.
A mere 6 inches of fast-moving flood water can knock over an adult. It takes just 12 inches of rushing water to carry away most cars. Two feet can carry away SUVs and trucks.
Those are the National Weather Service’s figures, and they are lower than almost anybody’s intuition. That gap between what people assume and what the water actually does is where the deaths happen.
The slogan is worth learning by heart because it is the entire instruction: Turn Around Don’t Drown.
The thing that makes desert flooding different
You do not have to be anywhere near rain.
A wash that is bone dry and has been dry for months is a drainage channel for an enormous area upstream. Rain falling miles away, on ground that absorbs almost nothing, arrives as moving water in a channel where you are standing in sunshine. The sky above you is not information about what is coming down that wash.
That is why local advice about washes sounds excessive to people who grew up with rivers. A river rises. A wash arrives.
Never drive into it, and the reason is arithmetic
The National Weather Service is unambiguous: it is never safe to drive or walk into flood waters. And it notes where the deaths actually occur — more than half of all flood-related drownings happen when a vehicle is driven into hazardous flood water, with walking into or near flood water the next largest share.
Two things make a road crossing worse than it looks:
You cannot see the roadbed. Moving water scours out what is underneath it, so the surface you are counting on may not be there. The depth you can see is not the depth you will find.
A foot of water is enough for most cars, and once a vehicle is floating you are no longer driving, you are a passenger in a boat with no buoyancy.
Turn around. The detour is measured in minutes and the alternative is measured differently.
If you are already in it
In a vehicle that is being moved by water: get out and get to higher ground if you can do it immediately. A vehicle that is floating will go where the water goes, and it will eventually go under.
If the vehicle is stationary and the water is rising around you, the roof is better than the inside of a car.
Call 911. Say where you are as precisely as you can — a cross street, a mile marker, a landmark. Water rescue is slow and location is most of the delay.
If somebody else is in the water: do not go in. Call, and keep them in sight so you can tell rescuers where they are.
What we see afterwards, and why it is worth coming in
The obvious injuries are the visible ones — cuts and bruises from being moved against rock, concrete and debris, and orthopaedic injury from falls.
Two that are less obvious and both deserve a visit:
Anybody who was submerged, even briefly, and even if they seem fine. Breathing water in can cause problems that develop over hours rather than immediately, so “they coughed and then were fine” is not the end of it.
Wounds contaminated by flood water. Flood water is not clean water — it moves through ground, drainage and whatever was on the street. A wound that looks minor and was in flood water is a different wound from the same cut sustained in a kitchen.
And cold matters more than people expect, even here. Somebody wet, in wind, after dark, can lose heat quickly, and children lose it faster than adults.
If you are unsure, come in — this list is not exhaustive and you are not expected to assess yourself after something frightening.
Questions people actually ask
The water looks shallow and slow. Can I cross? Six inches of fast-moving water knocks over an adult, and you cannot see the road underneath. Turn around.
It is a wash I cross every day. Being dry every day is what makes it dangerous — nobody expects the one time it is not.
I got through and the engine is running fine. Do I need anything? For the vehicle, that is a mechanic’s question. If anybody was in the water, or swallowed or inhaled any of it, that is a different matter and worth being seen for.
My child fell in and got out immediately and seems completely fine. Have them checked. Brief submersion is the situation where “seems fine now” carries the least weight.
How long do I have to decide? Less time than you think. That is the whole point of the slogan.
If someone has been swept into water, call 911 and do not go in after them. For injuries afterwards, both of our emergency rooms are open 24 hours a day, every day of the year — walk in, no appointment and no referral, with CT, X-ray and a full laboratory in the building. Find your nearest emergency room →
Related reading: which door do you need · heat exhaustion or heat stroke
Sources
- Turn Around Don’t Drown — National Weather Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. https://www.weather.gov/safety/flood-turn-around-dont-drown
This article is general information, not a diagnosis. If you are unsure, come in — this list is not exhaustive and you are not expected to assess yourself. If it might be an emergency, treat it as one and call 911.
If it might be an emergency, treat it as one. Both of our emergency rooms are open 24 hours a day, every day of the year — walk in, no appointment and no referral.
Find your nearest emergency room →About your bill, before you worry about it
Ability to pay is not a barrier to assessment and access to care in our emergency rooms — by law. An emergency visit bills at emergency rates, which are not clinic rates, and we would rather tell you that now than have you find out afterwards.
If anything you receive after a visit is unclear, call the facility you were seen at before you pay it. They hold the record of your visit, and they would rather explain a statement than have you pay something you do not owe.