One Year Later: The State of Globe 

As the first anniversary of the catastrophic 2025 flooding that besieged Globe approaches, City leaders are planning a memorial gathering at City Hall to recognize survivors of the horrific event and bring the community together in a show of solidarity.

“This isn’t a State of the City speech,” says Globe Mayor Al Gameros. “This is about coming together as a community one year later—to remember those we lost, honor those who were affected, and recognize the many people who stepped up to help from day one. It’s an opportunity to reflect on the past year, recognize the strength and resilience of our community, and look ahead to the continued recovery and the future of Globe.” 

The gathering will take place on Saturday, September 26 at Veteran's Park at Globe City Hall, with programming beginning at 6:04 p.m., the time the first emergency call was made on the night of the floods. The event will include a procession through downtown Globe to walk through the story of what happened and what has so far been rebuilt, and will end with a memorial drone show to commemorate those lost and honor the path forward. It is free and open to the public.

The flooding took place over the course of two nights last September, causing tens of millions of dollars in damage and taking the lives of three Globe-Miami residents; David Acevedo, Heather Johnson, and Terri Robles Saenz. Cleanup and recovery has been ongoing and will likely continue for years to come.

Despite the urgency of coping with the disaster, there was immediate at solidarity and a sense of community from the outset. The initial night of flooding saw citizens and City employees working together, side-by-side to save lives and clean up the sludge that inundated downtown Globe.

“Those first days are something I don’t think I will ever forget: I had never seen our community and local government closer than they were during that time,” says District 3 Councilman Jesse Leetham. “Residents, business owners, volunteers, first responders, City employees, elected officials, churches, nonprofits and organizations were all working toward the same goal. People brought whatever they had to offer—equipment, food, supplies, physical labor, information or simply their time.”

Leetham was returning from Mesa with his daughter and husband on the first night of flooding. Once he secured their safety, he immediately went downtown to his place of business to assess the damage. He then used his salon as a base of operations to help neighboring business owners, and through his then-presidency of the Globe-Miami Regional Chamber of Commerce, worked to establish a community “triage” operation to help connect citizens with the resources they needed.

“When someone needed help, we tried to connect them with someone who had the tools, equipment, vehicles or manpower to meet that need,” Leetham says. “We continued doing that until the Salvation Army was able to step in and take over more formal relief operations. There really wasn’t time to think about titles or whose responsibility something was. You saw a need and you tried to fill it.”

One Year Later: The State of Globe, will recognize the compassion and strength of the community and offer a place for residents to gather, reflect, and think about the future of the City.

In addition to memorial activities, there will be a storytelling area at the Oral History Booth provided by the Gila County Historical Society, featuring a place where the experiences of homeowners and community members can be recorded for posterity; a quiet area for personal reflection; a community art installation with luminarias available for the public to decorate, as well as support and resource booths. There will also be vendors and food trucks for gathering together after the memorial events.

What is expected to be one of the more profound moments of the evening will be honoring the victims who died in the flood and their families. Patricia Johnson, co-owner of Wreck O Mended in Globe, lost her sister Heather Johnson that night—she also lost her home to the flood.

This is not the first community disaster Johnson has survived, as her daughter Charlene “Charlie” Peak was a survivor of the mass shooting that took place at Jammerz Bar in downtown Globe on November 11, 2018.

According to Johnson, the current washed Heather Johnson off Highway 60 near Oak Street and her car was swept away on a nightmarish ride through a parking lot and across Broad Street. The current continued to spin her car around until it was back to the City parking lot, where it flipped over. When the car flipped, Heather was sucked out and drowned on the west side of the creek bank.

“We are still dealing with the loss, it was so unexpected and under strange circumstances,” Johnson says. “We were affected by the flood with the loss of Heather, and we almost lost my oldest daughter when our house washed into the creek.”

Johnson looks forward to the event and the chance to “promote healing,” and is grateful to the City for including family survivors in the event.

“It's a chance for the community to remember Heather and take a moment to grieve,” Johnson says. “The tragedies in our community have greatly affected our family, and our hearts are still heavy for the ones lost at Jammerz, and although Charlie is doing great, the experience has changed us all in one way or another. The trauma from shooting intensified the flood trauma, and both experiences were unexplainable and unexpected.”

In addition to allowing the community to grieve together, the event will highlight selflessness in the face of adversity, a sense of communal sacrifice, and hope for the future, as the citizens of Globe pull together once again in the wake of a natural disaster.

“A lot of people stepped in, not only from our community—our businesses and residents—but from other communities, not only throughout Arizona, but from other states, people who didn’t even know any of us,” Gameros says. “We are incredibly grateful for the many people who came forward to help. The dedication of our residents, businesses, volunteers, and so many others, working alongside our City staff, helped us begin restoring some sense of normalcy and moving our community forward.”