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SANDY — Cleanup crews mopped up quite a mess at business mall in Sandy Tuesday evening, after a frozen pipe burst and flooded a vacant store.
"Some lady came pounding on our door and said there's a flood going on at the gelato place," said Seattle Landers, who witnessed the flood.
That was around 4:15 p.m. at the old Italian Gelato Cafe near 9400 South and Highland Drive.. When the workers at the neighboring dry cleaning store went to take a look, the water was several feet deep.
"It was breaking the windows and everything, and then it started coming into ours, and it pretty much destroyed the place next to us," said Olivia Marz, who works at the dry cleaning store.
They called 911, and firefighters arrived quickly.
They broke open the doors, and the water just gushed," Landers said.
It's a good reminder for property owners to make sure that they've got some kind of heat source keeping those pipes from freezing, because this happens fairly often when we have cold spells like this.
–Derek Maxfield, Sandy Fire
Fire crews believe the leak ran for a long time, and they had a hard time shutting off the water because there was so much pouring out.
"The water inside the affected business was 4 feet deep, so it was pretty deep," said Sandy Fire Battalion Chief Derek Maxfield.
"It's a good reminder for property owners to make sure that they've got some kind of heat source keeping those pipes from freezing, because this happens fairly often when we have cold spells like this," Maxfield said.
In September 2011, store customers tried to help the previous owner of the Gelato Cafe save her business. She was unable to get an insurance payment to cover her losses from previous flooding and had to shut down.
Tuesday night, that owner said she was sickened at that time of the first flood by a plume of toxic chemicals underneath the stores, and that a scientist with the Utah Division of Environmental Quality told her that the dry cleaners next door leaked a highly toxic chemical called tetrachloroethene into the ground.
She hopes this broken pipe has not intensified that problem.
Meanwhile, other businesses damaged in Tuesday's flood are left to clean up a big mess.
