The Spirit of Sedona Against Adversity

Tlaquepaque rises from the mud to put on Festival - By Tommy Acosta
SEDONA, AZ (Sept 18, 2009) - The ability of the human spirit to rise up against adversity is unfathomable. Just look at the resilience and indomitable will shown by those whose businesses were inundated by the incredible storm that struck Sedona the afternoon of Thursday, Sept. 10, 2009.

While from one end of Sedona to the other some businesses struggled with the aftermath of the torrential deluge, it was in the Tlaquepaque Arts & Crafts Village where the storm focused its greatest rage with a flood so powerful walls were knocked down; cars were carried away; people were left clinging to trees and walls for their lives; heroes came to the rescue the trapped; and businesses were flooded hip deep in red mud and water two days before their most important event of the year.

Tlaquepaque manager Wendy Lippman was at her desk one flight up from the ground when she got the call. “I was listening to the hail around 2:30 p.m. when a crew member told me there was a car in Soldier’s Wash,” she said. “I looked outside and saw I couldn’t get out my back stairs because the water was rushing by so fast. We had waves moving up and down the street. I called 911, took off my shoes and waded through everything. The water was cold and dirty. I was running around all over the complex telling tenants to shut down and call 911.”
What she didn’t say was she could not have been dressed worse for the occasion.
“Wendy was running through the water wearing a grey dress,” said Nicole Brundage of Kuivato, Glass Gallery, whose store was still closed one week after the deluge. “She was running up and down with her dress hiked up, the hem splashed with mud, yelling at everyone to get out of their stores. It was something to see.”

Barbara Kovac of How Sweet It Is “The Chocolate Factory,” remembers Wendy’s warning calls.
“It was amazing,” she said. “Wendy was racing up and down through the flood warning people. She asked me to call 911 and I did it.” “There was a lot of panic,” Wendy said. “In a million years I never thought the courtyard would flood.”

Tlaquepaque Maintenance Manager Jared Hawley thought when the flooding began it a case of debris backing up. “My first thought was there must be a log stuck in the wash,” he said. That was right when it started. I made it to the employee parking lot bridge and already there was a car stuck in there.”

Nicole from Kuivato said it was Jared who first alerted her that the flood was coming.
“I was born and raised in Sedona and it was raining harder than I ever saw. So I called my husband, who loves weather, to tell him about it,” she said. “The next thing we know Jarrod comes running to tell us our boxes in the front of the store are floating away. Suddenly the water was almost hip high, just like that. We closed the door and jammed it with towels to slow down the water from coming into the store. Outside it was a few feet deep but inside it was only a few inches deep. We just stayed inside and got everything off the floor. I looked outside and saw the water was up to the doors of my SUV. It was a little scary.”

Barbara of How Sweet It Is said she thought of the Hurricane Katrina flooding victims while watching the waters rise. “It started small and then it became big,” she said. “I didn’t know what was going on. In seconds the water was up to my knees. It happened so fast. It was so devastating. We were walking in calf-deep mud. I thought of the poor Katrina people.”
She said she made it, after falling into the water and being helped up by a man, to the Oak Creek Brewery. “They kept us safe,” she said. “There was a woman downstairs hanging to a tree and she was screaming her lungs out. It was horrible.”

But unlike the Katrina victims, the waters in Tlaquepaque subsided 45 minutes after the deluge ended, leaving behind a sea of mud, strewn cars and torn up vegetation, two days before the highly publicized and much anticipated Fiesta Del Tlaquepaque. Wendy Lipmann had her hands full. “The first thing I had to do was get my hands around it,” she said. “The Tlaquepaque Fiesta was two days away and I had to make a decision. I had already spent a fortune on it for advertising. I had hired the entertainment. I figured I could put everything on one end of the property if I had to. My crew thought I was insane.”

She called me that night to tell me she wanted to go ahead with it,” Jared said. “The doubt in my voice was clear.” When Verde Valley Rentals showed up to put up the canvass tents for the event, they couldn’t believe what happened. “They asked what the hell had happened,” she said. “I needed a few more hours to figure out to do it or not.” Having dealt with the disaster, she decided to go ahead.

“A construction company showed up with heavy equipment and 20 workers,” she said. “We busted ourselves and we had a lot of volunteers. Visitors at the hotel went back to their rooms, changed clothes and came back to dig mud. People were so nice and helpful. Picking up wet mud was not fun but spray washing it off was fun because it gives you a sense of accomplishment.

She said it was the pleasantness and sense of community cooperation that got the job done.
“My crew was amazing,” she said. “It worked out because everyone made the best they could of the situation. Everyone was pleasant. Everyone was nice. Peoples’ attitudes were really great. If people were nasty we could not have dealt with it.”

“With the volunteers and people who showed up it was phenomenal,” he said. “The community came together. People went back to their hotels, changed clothes and came back to help. The Sedona Master Gardeners came down and took care of our rose garden like it was their own, picking up and straightening every branch and twig.” Barbara, even though How Sweet it Is lost their entire inventory in the flood, said the community spirit and involvement was a sight to behold. “It was amazing how and all the people in Tlaquepaque came together on this,” she said. ‘Even the quests that came to Sedona helped.

With everybody pitching in, by Friday morning most of the mud had been cleared, the Tlaquepaque parking lot was usable and the Fiesta del Tlaquepaque went off without a hitch.
“We had all kinds of visitors,” Wendy said. “A lot of locals showed up to show their support. That made everyone here feel pretty great. At three o’clock storm clouds gathered and everyone was out of there in minutes. It was still a good day for us and were thankful for everything.”
Nicole praised those who fought together to dig out Tlaquepaque and the will of the community to help each other out.

“It almost gave me chills to see how many people came from all parts of the community to help,” she said. “Within 24 hours we had almost cleaned up all the mud. It’s nice to see so many people care about Tlaquepaque. This is what the spirit of Sedona is all about