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DRAPER -- A hard-hitting rainstorm zeroed in on an already vulnerable hillside. The result was a river of mud running into yards and homes in the Corner Canyon area, near 2000 East and 12400 South.
It is the same area that was burned by a wildfire last summer, making it high risk for slides.
Residents describe damage caused by mudslide
Draper resident Shanna Maylett told KSL, "One [room] is a total disaster. It's gone, it's lost; we lost everything. I think we saved his sticks and a pair of church shoes. His yearbooks are gone and all his memorabilia he got from the school year. It's kind of sad."
The Mayletts said they gathered their family and left. "I ran upstairs, got my little girl who was asleep, yanked her out of bed, threw her into the car. Got my other kids, left the house. He got the cars out, and I just took my kids to my mother's house and came back to this," Maylett said.
At her next-door neighbor's house a window well and the garage were buried in mud.
It's all from the weakened, fire-burned hillside in the Corner Canyon area of Draper. The same area was burned by a huge wildfire in August 2008, making it an area of concern for slides.
Capt. Clint Smith, with Unified Fire Authority, said, "We have definitely been watching this area. We know we've had immense amounts of rainfall in the past couple of weeks. The hardest part is trying to predict where and when."
"When it came down, we stood here and said, ‘It really happened. How could this have really happened?'" Maylett said.
The cleanup
The mud also hit the Olsons' home while they are out of the country. They're headed back now, but their cousin, James, is there in the meantime to help clean up.
"The garage was still open. He (their son) opened the door and the mud started coming down here. They wouldn't close all the way. The basement has two to four inches of sludge," James said.
As everyone in this Draper neighborhood continues to clean up, they're keeping a very close eye on the weather and on the soggy hillside.
As Maylett said, "I'm more concerned now than I ever was before."
Crews spent much of night building a wall with sand bags and using front-end loaders. The cleanup takes time and can cost into the many thousands of dollars.
"It's literally a manual job. Depending on the thickness of the mud, there's equipment where we can actually extract it through a vacuum. Otherwise, it's just gentlemen getting in there and shoveling that stuff out of there," said Eric Fairbanks, with Utah Disaster Cleanup.
Even after the digging is done, homeowers will need to watch for structural damage and mold. But perhaps more worrisome: that dicey hillside, made even more unstable by the weather.
"Now we've got big boulders coming down right at the edge of our property there. And that's a concern 'cause they're not set in the dirt like they were before. Now they're teetering," Maylett said.
Working to prevent another slide
On Wednesday, officials from the U.S. Forest Service and Draper City flew over the area to assess the potential for more trouble. They say straw mulch and debris fences installed after last summer's fire did the job. There was just too much rain.
"From all indications Doppler radar was saying somewhere around an inch to an inch and a half of rain in about half and hour, and that'll do the job for sure. Not necessarily on a fire [scar], but on any place, any canyon on the Wasatch that gets that amount of rain in that short period of time is going to have problems with flooding," said Paul Flood, soil scientist with the U.S. Forest Service.
Draper City Manager Layne Long said, "Forest Service is gonna go up and clean the silt fences again. They did exactly what they're supposed to do; and if there's another rain event, they'll stop some of the silt. But it's loose in that area, from Cherry Canyon up north to Bear Canyon. That's a very dangerous area."
Draper resident Gina Johnson told KSL, "It is dangerous. It's really scary, and I think the oversaturation of this really fragile mountain face here is not a good thing for anybody."
Predictions for more thunderstorms have residents on edge. "I just hope we don't get any more rain. I'm praying for that, that it dries up, because we need to dry out," Johnson said.
Everyone here is hoping for some dry weather to come and that they can dodge any more powerful thunderstorms.
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Compiled with information from Courtney Orton, Randall Jeppesen and John Daley.
