Two men have died and at least one person remains missing following catastrophic flash flooding in the Grand Canyon, emergency officials in Arizona confirmed, while questions linger over why an early warning system failed during the surge. The situation showed significant improvement by Tuesday e vening after the list of missing persons dropped from more than a dozen earlier in the day. A surge of muddy water pierced through the canyon, sweeping away structures in its path and leaving survivors with harrowing stories of escape. “It was like the whole trail was being washed out,” one survivor recalled. “We were just trying to run.” David Gregory, who was among those rescued by air, described the sudden onset of the storm. “It just started pouring,” Gregory said. “I was completely drenched. We were completely drenched from head to toe.” The incident commander confirmed Tuesday that search crews recovered a second body, bringing the official death toll to two and narrowing the count of unlocated individuals to one. The families of three friends caught in the flood confirmed that Texas chiropractor John Giusti died in the incident. Giusti was traveling with Brent Rosenkranz and Timothy Smith. Authorities have not yet specified whether Rosenkranz or Smith represents the second confirmed fatality or the individual who remains missing. Heavy rain hampered search and recovery efforts throughout the day. “Today we were under a flash flood warning, raining very hard all day so our weather’s looking much better tomorrow,” said Incident Commander Dave Black. “We are absolutely holding out hope that that person is still alive.” Meanwhile, an investigation is underway into why the park’s river gage system went offline during the disaster. According to the National Park Service website, the system was installed last year in partnership with the U.S. Geological Survey following a major fire, designed to provide real-time data and early flash flood warnings. “Because we haven’t been able to get on the ground and take a look at the systems, we’re not sure why whether it was the debris flow that knocked them out of service or whether it was some other factor that put them offline,” said Brian Drapeaux of Grand Canyon National Park. “But we do know that they were working and then they weren’t working.” ...read more read less