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Team Coverage The flood waters in Saratoga Springs are receding this afternoon. In fact, in some areas that were flooded just hours ago there's almost no water on the ground right now. But it was a different story earlier in the day.
Months of heavy snow and a sudden spike in temperatures turned streets into rivers and basements into ponds. In both Saratoga Springs and Herriman, water rushed towards homes after rain and warm temperatures melted the snow in a hurry.
Flooding in Saratoga Springs caused a mess for drivers trying to get in and out of the city. Some areas just off Redwood Road had 3 feet of water streaming into neighborhood streets.
Redwood Road itself was covered in water as well, and drivers were splashing through it all day. The city has helped control the water, though, so it didn't flow into any of these homes.
Crews pumped water from Redwood Road right out into the city streets. Neighbors filled sandbags and stacked them in the road to channel the water all the way down to Utah Lake. "If we can keep it flowing down the road here, it goes straight out to the lake. As long as we can keep that under control, it's fine," one resident said.
Tim Schreiber lives right next to where the water is running off. His basement came close to getting flooded yesterday; but with the help of volunteers, public works and the fire department, his home was saved.
Schreiber and his family have lived here for six years and this has never happened before. But in a record snow-fall year, the run-off water is going everywhere.
"There's creeks to the north and south, and I just figured they always go down there, but I think I'm a little overwhelmed right now," Schreiber said. "We expected, if anything, it's going to be the lake, not a field across the street causing all kinds of trouble," he said.
Schreiber says as far as he knows, no basements flooded.
A lot of people were overwhelmed, including one driver who swerved into a 3-foot puddle and got stuck for half an hour. "I was just driving, then someone stopped in front of me. I swerved and I landed in this puddle," Rob Horrocks explained.
Horrocks says he's never seen this much flooding. "Not like this, no. It's just filling up the whole road back there," he said.
The city is working on plans to prevent this from happening again. They say they are going to use sandbags in the immediate future, but for long-term they're working on drainage systems that will be put into place sometime in the coming month.
Problems in Herriman started around noon on Sunday near 12400 South and 4790 West. Resident Sue Butcher says the water was so deep that it was like a river. "Guess it got clear up to those houses over there. They were over there sweeping it up and pushing it back," she said.
Unified Fire Captain Jay Fearnley says if it warms up quickly, we could see more problems along the Wasatch Front. "This is something that I think all city officials this year have got to keep a close eye on with the high snowpack we've had this year," he said.
Crews in Herriman cleared a trench to divert the water away from homes. Firefighters say the homeowners were lucky because there were no basements in the houses.
