Arizona flood recovery: Camp Verde flood ruins newly finished home, washes away pasture

It's now been eight days since heavy rain caused the Verde River to flood and still people in Camp Verde are cleaning up that mess. Tonight, Fox 10's Andrew Christensen hears from a man who says his dream home was destroyed and Andrew has more on his journey to get it back. Well, a man that lives here in Camp Verde tells me that he has never seen the river come onto his property. As you can see, it destroyed his fence and parts of cars are even floating onto his property. And in the 20 years that he's lived here, he says he's never seen flooding like this. This is how full the water was in my house. As he looks at the damage in the house he just paid off, it took about six guys two days to get that out of our house, and it's about three, four inches thick. Pat Phillips sees the hard work he put into building his forever home. That's how it makes me feel. I mean, this was our dream. Phillips says he just finished working on a few rooms in the house. And what's sad, I just finished this closet. I just finished it three weeks ago. I just got the elliptical. You can see the water line on the wall and the cabinets. Many things the flood destroyed are sentimental. You know what's really sad? This was my childhood dresser when I was a kid, and I kept it all my life. Now he's having to tear up his house even more to make repairs. Within the second day, we already had mold growing in here. In the meantime, he's living in his camper. So we cleaned it out, and that's our new home away from home. And we pretty much are homeless. The flood in Camp Verde also affected his animals. You can see how high it was, and it took my chickens right off their roost. I couldn't get them out of here fast enough. My horses were in waste. I was out there in waste water trying to get my horses out of there. The floodwaters also washed away massive chunks of his pasture, leaving the cattle he raises without grass to feed on. That's about, what, 25, 30-foot drop? This was flat land. So instead of having like 15 or 20 cows like I had, I'll have four or five. Because that's all the property I got left. Through it all, Phillips says neighbors are stepping up to help each other. It's been nice to see the community help each other. And all the neighbors, we're probably tighter than we've ever been. Reporting in Camp Verde, Andrew Christensen, Fox 10 News.