National Park Service officials have formally identified two of the victims of last weekend’s flooding in Grand Canyon National Park.
Teams recovered the bodies of John Giusti, 46, and Brent Rosenkranz, 42. Both men were from Granbury, Texas. Giusti was a chiropractor and Rosenkranz owned a martial arts studio.
The two were part of a three-person hiking group who were in the inner canyon Saturday afternoon when a severe flash flood swept through Bright Angel Creek along the North Kaibab Trail.
The Associated Press has identified the missing hiker as Timothy Smith, a 53-year-old pilot from Wyoming.
“The efforts today include a deployment of multiple teams of ground searchers with cadaver detection canine capabilities down into the delta area of the Phantom Ranch developed area to search in the debris flow,” says Brian Bloom, who’s leading the incident management team.
At a Monday press conference at park headquarters in the South Rim officials said they’d revised the number of people who were unaccounted for down to one. They also said they’re still trying to account for anyone else who may have been in the impacted area at the time of the flood.
In previous days continued monsoon rain and the potential for further flooding kept ground crews out of the inner canyon. Officials opted instead to conduct searches by helicopter. Bloom says search teams have been employing new technology to try to find the missing hiker.
"It's capable of detecting faint Bluetooth signals, for example, from air tags or wireless earphones or low frequencies down to as low as like, insulin patches that go to cell phones and that kind of thing.”
Those with information about people who may have been hiking or backpacking in Bright Angel Canyon or the surrounding area on Sat, Aug. 29 is asked to contact the NPS Investigative Servies Branch tip line at (888) 653-0009.
