HIGHLAND, Utah, Oct. 6, 2018 (Gephardt Daily) — There was high drama in Highland on Thursday night and into Friday morning after a wall of mud and water inundated two homes beneath an old burn scar.
The flooding began about 7:30 p.m. after heavy rains pounded the hills above Shoreline Drive.
Resident Amy Foote told Gephardt Daily she and her husband, Casey, were on the second floor of their home when they saw a wall of water six to eight feet wide come over the wall in their backyard and pour into their walkout basement.
“It broke out the glass on the door and busted the door wide open,” Amy said. “We ran down to our basement and just watched as the water level rose.”
In addition to bashing through the door, the mud and water created a mess eight inches deep across the 1,700-square-foot basement.
That’s when the cavalry arrived, so to speak.
“We have the most amazing neighbors who came and emptied the entire basement with buckets,” Amy said. “So many people helped.”
The city also brought in sandbags, plus a backhoe and grader to redirect the flow of water away from the property.
Casey Foote said, “At any given time there were 60 to 70 people helping with sandbagging or whatever they could do.”
One of the men still helping with the clean-up at 1 a.m. nodded toward Casey and said, “This guy would be right there with me if this happened at my house.”
Ironically, the family has been working on finishing the basement, and if there’s an upside to all of this, it’s that they hadn’t yet completed the project.
“It passed inspection on Tuesday,” Casey Foote said. “We were getting some of our furniture ordered — but luckily there was nothing down here.”
He explained that the family has been in the home about 10 years, and in the past the vegetation on the hillside diffused the runoff from heavy rains.
“But this year, it just came down and cut a pathway through the dirt. There was no vegetation to stop it,” he said.
