[Editor’s Note: For this answer, we turned to Matt O’Brien, author of Beneath the Neon and My Week at the Blue Angel and founder of the community project Shine a Light. The second edition of Beneath the Neon is scheduled to be released this year to mark the 10-year anniversary of the publication of the book.]
Despite its aridity, Las Vegas has a long and sordid history of flooding. In July 1905 two months after the city was founded, a thunderstorm soaked the wooden storefronts and sprawling ranches. (Minimal damage was sustained, as there was little developed property around at the time.) A series of floods swamped stores and homes, shorted out phone and power lines, and shut down roads and railroads in the summer of ’55. A July 1975 flood swept hundreds of cars from the parking lot of Caesars Palace, closed down a section of the Strip, and claimed two lives.
Between August 1982 and December 2002, at least 19 lives were lost to floods in Las Vegas.
The city’s most destructive modern-day flood occurred in July 1999, when three inches of rain fell in an hour and a half. (The average annual rainfall is 4.50 inches.) Sidewalks became streams, streets rivers, intersections lakes. Washes raged, growing wider and wider as their banks crumbled. Trash cans, news racks, cars, mobile homes, and people were swept away. The Las Vegas and Clark County fire departments performed more than 200 swift-water rescues and the water caused $20 million in property damage. A week after the flood, President Clinton declared the county a disaster area.
On June 30, 2016, three homeless people died during yet another flash flood. One of them was my friend Sharon, who’d lived in a drain under the south Strip off and on for 10 years. Sharon was a 55-year-old grandmother. She was once married and had the white picket fence. She had a boyfriend named Jazz.
A week before the flood, HELP of Southern Nevada offered Sharon and Jazz housing individually. They declined; they didn’t want to be apart (and perhaps weren’t ready to be "clean"). As the water carried them away, they were conscious and communicating. A double-barrel drain approached. Stripped naked by the floodwater, Jazz managed to climb over the top of the drain. Sharon was pinned against the façade. He grabbed her hand and was pulling her up when a shopping cart slammed into her and she sunk beneath the surface. The following morning, her body was recovered from a pile of wet debris.
Because the floods can be so deadly and devastating, many tunnel dwellers keep their valued possessions (wallets, personal paperwork, mementos, etc.) in a bag and exit the tunnel with it when it starts to rain. All of their other possessions (mattresses, milk crates, clothing, etc.) are disposable.
In the final chapter of Beneath the Neon, I document a flood from the clouds forming to the drain filling, then come back the next day to interview the inhabitants. Here’s a snippet of my conversation with Gary, an artist and meth addict who’d lived in the drain for three years:
"‘You survived the flood?’ I said, sitting and leaning against the wall.
‘Yeah,’ said Gary, sitting next to me. ‘I’d been expecting it for three days, so I had all my stuff — my mattress, carpet, everything—off the floor. I was sleeping in my chair beneath my skylight [the grate] when I felt raindrops hitting me. I knew it was time to get out of here or else be stuck all day and night, so I left. As soon as I got out, the main barrage came down. I got soaked running to the Flamingo overpass. I hid from the rain there.’
‘For how long?’
‘Until it stopped, then I went to the tunnels under Valley View to see how my friends made out.’
‘They OK?’
‘Yeah. They built a dike to direct the water away from their tunnel.’
‘When did you come back here?’
‘Late last night. The water was still flowing through. I had to go further down the tunnel and dig up some of that gravel, so the water wouldn’t back up.’
‘How’d you sleep with the water going through?’
‘I didn’t. A friend of mine got me high and that motivated me to go out and make some money so I could stay high.
‘I usually go somewhere else when it rains,’ continued Gary in a low voice. ‘I hang out in a casino or something like that. I don’t like being down here. It’s too noisy. The water rushes through, echoing off the walls and pounding your brain. It’s too much.’
‘What do you do after it rains?’
‘I come back here as soon as I can. There’s usually gravel all over the floor. The first thing I do is shovel and sweep it away. The debris gets stuck there.’ He pointed at the chair and the front of the camp. ‘I got to haul all that down the tunnel. As you can see I haven’t gotten around to doing that yet. Then I just wait for the water to evaporate off the floor, so I can put my mattress and carpet back down and set everything up again — until the next time it rains.’"
In 15 years of exploring the Las Vegas storm drains, I’ve met residents who go to sportsbooks, fast-food restaurants, coffee shops, libraries, and other similar locales when it rains. I’ve also met people who, as Gary suggested, get trapped in the tunnels or choose to ride it out on their (elevated) mattresses. As more than 100 years of history show, they do so at their own peril.
