OREM, Utah (KSTU) – The city of Orem, Utah, is calling this week’s heavy rain a “100-year flood event.”
Cleanup woes continue for the families who had water break through into their homes.
People who have lived in the area for decades said they had never seen weather like they did on Tuesday.
Fans of all shapes and sizes are running nonstop in the Redd family’s basement. They are doing anything to dry out the downstairs from the rainstorm.
“The worst part was the glass and the hail and the debris, just trying to filter out that and try to bump out the water,” Whitney Redd said.
Redd’s in-laws were one of the many Orem homeowners hit by what the city is calling historic flooding.
“It was just like, ‘Oh, this is fun. This is new,’ and then it just started dumping, dumping, dumping, to the point where it looked like a river was coming down our driveway here,” Redd remembered.
It was then an instant scramble to move what they could to higher ground, but the rain was just coming down too fast.
“My husband comes down and he’s like, ‘It’s coming down too quick. There’s no way we’re getting all this out. Get out of the room. Get out of the room,’” Redd recalled.
Redd was recording the leaking window until the water burst through.
“Surreal, just surreal, all that water coming in,” Redd added. “We’d recently been to Niagara Falls and it was like that in our home.”
Redd says there was about 2 feet of water in the room, which they just finished remodeling the basement from a sewage backup two months ago.
“Everyone is safe,” Redd said. “So, I think it was to the point where everyone is safe. It’s just a house. It’s really crappy, but it’s just a house.”
More rain is forecast this weekend, so the Redds stocked up on sandbags and plan to do whatever they can to prevent potentially more water from coming in.
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