Saratoga Mudslide

Our weekend was an interesting one.

Carson had plans to hike Mt. Timp Saturday morning with some friends.  I wasn't going with because I had a baby shower to go to and other errands.  Well, early Saturday morning we woke up to a crazy thunder storm.  The lightning was amazing and it was just dumping rain!  But this meant that Carson couldn't hike Mt. Timp.  :(  Poor guy, he was so excited.  Seriously, we have so been needing water this Summer and really welcome the moisture but the timing was just bad.

Carson stayed home with James while I went to the baby shower and ran my errands, which actually worked out nicely in that sense.  And actually James pretty much just slept the whole day....he was such a tired boy.

at the baby shower

Later that evening we went up to Salt Lake where a family member was having his reception held in the Rice Eccles stadium tower.  It was amazing!  Such a beautiful place to have a reception, despite it being at our rival's stadium :)  They did some pictures out on the field so Laurie and Kelvyn took James with them to do that and captured some of their own pictures of him.  Carson and I stayed up in the tower and watched, there was no way Carson was going onto that field ;)  actually it was very windy so we (or I) didn't really want to go outside.  We had a great time there and decided to head back down at about 7:45pm.

James had been so tired lately so I was thrilled that we were entering our city before his bed time!  But as we rounded Redwood into our neighborhood at about 8:30pm, there were a lot of emergency vehicles entirely blocking off the road and were diverting traffic off East onto a smaller road.  At first I thought, oh no, someone's hit a deer but as we came around on the smaller road to try and get around the scene and maybe cross Redwood at a later point, there was another police officer guiding people around a large, VERY large puddle in the road.  As we drove past, I asked him what was going on.  He said there had been a mudslide.  I asked if he knew exactly where.  He didn't know.  I asked if any houses were affected.  He didn't know that either.

As we continued on, we could see that we were at the end of the mudslide and even down at that point, yards were damaged.  We then came to a standstill.  They were not letting anyone through that road as well.  As I mentioned we were at the end of the mudslide so it was blocking the road.  We were told a plow was going to come and clear it so we waited....so much for getting James to bed on time.  But really that wasn't my concern anymore.  My main concern was is my house okay?  Are my neighbor's houses okay?

Then my sister, Andrea who lives in Saratoga called me.  She told me she just read on KSL.com that there was a mudslide and she believed it was in the neighborhood just barely North of mine.  This is where her husbands brother and his wife live.  She had seen a house on the news that she recognized as one in their neighborhood.  Her brother and sister-in-law were out of town so she needed someone to check on their house.  Well, we weren't allowed in and my brother-in-law had tried to come out but of course wasn't allowed in so I made a few calls.  I was able to get a hold of my neighbor.  First, I wanted to check on the status of our house and our neighborhood and then to see if they could go check on the other house.  I was relieved to hear that our house was okay.  My neighbor drove over and checked on my sister's in-laws house.  She said the scene was pretty bad.  The roads were coated in mud.  They had to take a few different routes to even get there (this is like 3 blocks from our house).  Everyone was outside sandbagging and trying to deal with what happened. They reported the house seemed to have little damage on the outside (there was some damage to the side of their yard).  We were also able to get them access inside the home so we could make sure there was no damage inside.  Despite all the houses around them having major basement flooding their house was miraculously dry.  Except for the minor yard damage, the house was pretty much untouched.

In the meantime we were still waiting for the roads to get plowed (it had been about an hour at this point).  We had utilized our time calling back and forth coordinating between our neighbors who were checking up on the house and my sister.  But at this point, we decided to head back up to SL to stay the night at Carson's parents house. James was so tired and was having a hard time sleeping in the car seat.

About half an hour after we got to Carson's parents they were then letting people back to the neighborhood but by that point we had already put James down and decided we would stay.  I was supposed to teach primary the next morning at church and my team teacher was out of town so I had made a phone call earlier on to the Primary President telling her we would try to get back down on time.  She returned my call at about 11:30pm telling me they were also trapped out of the neighborhood and had just got back in.  She had also got word that they had cancelled church and everyone was to help with the clean up efforts the next morning.

So the next morning we headed back down.  I don't think we realized the severity of it until we drove through.  You could see it's exact path, everything in it pretty much destroyed.  Carson went to help with the clean up while I stayed home with James.  When he returned he told me how bad it was.  I think it was 24 homes were damaged, most of them filled with mud up to the ceilings in the basement.  Debri everywhere.  Yards wiped out.  Windows and even the whole side of one house broken.  One of the houses it hit is a total loss.  AC units and trees were uprooted and thrown into windows of houses.  People's belongings were destroyed.  A few teenage kids who lived in the basement lost all of their belongings.  I feel so sorry for these people.  And this is the same area that had the wildfire earlier this Summer.  Can you imagine having to be evacuated because of a fire and the threat of losing your home and then the relief of not losing it to just a few months later being hit with another major natural disaster and not being able to do anything about it?  The cause of the mudslide was definitely a direct result of the wildfire.  Because of the wildfire, there was no vegetation to hold back all the rain we received.

This used to be a park...now it's a swimming pool

Carson also helped yesterday on Labor Day.  There is still so much that needs to be done.  But I can't even tell you how impressed I am with the people in this community.  Everyone was so quick to jump in and lend a helping hand.  People gave up their whole day to help either shovel mud, carry buckets, make and deliver food for the volunteers, watch other people's children so that they could go and help.  I get sort of choked up about it.  There were volunteers from our Stake, neighboring Stakes, and even people from Lone Peak, Eagle Mountain, and Orem/ Provo areas that came to help.  I am grateful to live in a community that cares so much about one another.