A Nissan pickup truck was swept off Overton Road last summer and is still buried in sand in the Cañada del Oro Wash, between Overton Road and La Cholla Boulevard (bridge in the background).

 Henry Brean, Arizona Daily Star

On Aug. 10, firefighters waded into a raging Cañada del Oro wash to pull three people from a Nissan pickup moments before the churning floodwaters carried the two-ton truck downstream.

Now county officials are trying to decide what to do — if anything — about the wrecked vehicle, which is still out there in the wash, buried to its wheel wells almost a quarter-mile from where it was swept off of Overton Road.

The top of the truck is visible from the east side of the North La Cholla Boulevard bridge, if you know just where to look.

Officials from the Pima County Regional Flood District were not aware of it until the Star asked about it.

“Frankly, we were all kind of surprised to hear it was still there,” said Brian Jones, division manager for the district. “We assumed the insurance company would have recovered the vehicle as part of any claim.”

According to Jones, the wreckage doesn’t pose a significant danger to the public.

“From a pure flood perspective, the district isn’t particularly concerned. The vehicle is not going to impact flows,” he said.

A passenger in a Nissan pickup truck looks up at firefighters inching their way down Golder Ranch Fire Ladder 380 during a swift water rescue in the Cañada del Oro Wash at Overton Road, just east of La Cholla Boulevard on Aug. 10, 2021.

Officials are not too worried about oil or fuel leaking from the wreckage, either. Jones said most of the truck’s fluids were probably lost when it tumbled violently down the wash during the flood.

“As an ongoing environmental hazard, there’s probably not a lot there,” he said. “The contaminants that are in normal floodwaters far exceed what’s in a single vehicle.”

Even so, the county’s risk management department told Jones that the wreckage amounts to “an attractive nuisance” and should be cleared from county land.

Jones said the district is now “weighing its options,” including whether to ask the truck’s owner or insurance carrier to remove the vehicle or hire a contractor to do the work and then seek reimbursement from the owner.

He likened the abandoned truck to an illegal dump site, albeit an unintentional one.

“Basically, it’s their property on our property,” he said. “If you don’t drive through flooded washes, this doesn’t happen.”

Jones added that the county should be able to figure out who the truck belongs to using the VIN printed on the vehicle and other information.

A records request filed by the Star late last week seeking the names of the people rescued from the truck is still being processed by the Golder Ranch Fire District and the Northwest Fire District, the two agencies that responded to the call.

The Pima County Regional Flood District is “weighing its options,” including whether to ask the truck’s owner or insurance carrier to remove the vehicle or hire a contractor to do the work and then seek reimbursement from the owner.

Though vehicles seem to end up stranded in floodwaters or washed off roads every year in Tucson, it’s rare for one to be abandoned and nearly forgotten like this. Jones said it happens so rarely that the county doesn’t really have any procedures in place for handling it.

“It’s certainly sparked some interesting conversations around here,” he said.

Overton is one of only a handful of significant roads in the area that still cross through a wash large enough to carry a vehicle so far downstream. Bridges have been built at almost every other major crossing, he said.

As a result, Jones said, he doesn’t know of very many vehicles left abandoned in Tucson’s main wash channels, though there could be some out there from decades ago, including some that are completely buried in sand.

“Historically, people used to use old vehicles as bank protection along their property,” he said.

The pick-up truck is carried downstream after Golder Ranch firefighters rescued two people trapped inside during a swift water rescue Aug. 10, 2021.

You can still find evidence of the practice along the Rillito, where it curls under the railroad tracks and Interstate 10 just south of Orange Grove Road. Along the east side of the tracks, there is a row of 14 flatbed rail cars buried in the ground on their sides years ago in an effort to shield the railway from the river.

Since then, Jones said, the county has reinforced the river bank and built a stretch of the Chuck Huckelberry Loop through that area, rendering the rail-car flood barrier obsolete.

Jones said the district plans to keep an eye on the wreck in the Cañada del Oro to make sure it doesn’t move farther downstream, closer to the La Cholla bridge.

He has also asked the district’s infrastructure management team to get a cost estimate for removing the truck from the wash.

It’s too soon to say when the actual work might be done, but if the county ends up doing it, it will either happen before this year’s monsoon season or after it, Jones said.

As the rescue in August demonstrated, the wash is a dangerous place to be during summer thunderstorms.

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Contact reporter Henry Brean at hbrean@tucson.com or 573-4283. On Twitter: @RefriedBrean