SALT LAKE CITY — During its 30 year anniversary, many people are remembering the devastating Utah flood of 1983 that turned State Street into a river, created a lake out of a town, and buried memories of a Farmington woman.

Several canyons piled with snow during the harsh winter, and when spring came, the snow melted causing torrents of runoff water. The 1983 flood left dozens of families homeless and ruined acres of farmland. Fern Pies was hit particularly hard by the disaster.

Pies had been on a vacation in California when she got the news that her home had been destroyed by the flood.

"It was an old pioneer home, 18 inches solid rock walls," Pies said. "It's the house I was born and raised in lived by whole life in. That's where we were going to live my whole life."

The mud and debris pushed down the canyon from the floodwater destroyed much of Pies neighborhood. When Pies returned home from her vacation, she found a pile of mud where her house had been.

"Mud," she said. "The whole house was gone."

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Pies said that she was upset about losing her home, but also about all the lost memories. However, as she was digging through the 15 feet of mud, she found her mother's 1928 high school yearbook.

"Well, I lost so much that I hadn't thought about any one particular thing so everything I found was precious to me," she said.

A man in Florida saw news footage of Pies damaged year book, and offered to restore the book for free.

"we had a lot of people helping," Pies said. "(He) said, 'Just leave the book. Send it to me and I'll fix it for you.' "

Pies also located a family history book known to her relatives as "the green book" during the flood cleanup.

"It used to be green and it was always called the green book," she said. "Well, they were digging and I says, 'Watch out for the green book.' And just then the steam shovel comes up and on the outside of one of the teeth was this green book. Other than a few mud streaks on it, it's good as new."

Pies said that as discouraged as she was about losing most of her belongings during the flood, she realized that she was also very blessed.

"When you get really down, instead of counting your problems, I had to say for every problem I had to name 10 good things that came out of it. (I) still had my family, had my health, had a lot of nice people help. Finally, I got over being depressed and decided I was more blessed than hurt."

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