UTAH'S FLOOD WATCH
Kaysville says it could be months before damage is repaired from flooding
Apr 13, 2023, 6:29 PM | Updated: Apr 17, 2023, 11:37 am
KAYSVILLE, Utah — It is still no laughing matter. However, Brooke Schulthies says she and her husband have no choice.
“We have to. I mean, what else are we going to do? Getting angry? Crying? It’s not going to help anything,” she said.
They live on Orchard Ridge Lane in Kaysville. The family moved in just a couple of months ago.
Now, though, because of flooding, they have a view they never expected.
“We keep joking we now have riverfront property with a beautiful canyon view,” Schulthies said with a slight laugh.
If only those little laughs, to keep away tears, could make it all go away, the damage would be fixed by now.
“This is going to be a process that’s going to take months,” Josh Belnap said.
Belnap is Kaysville’s Public Works director and says a lot of underground utilities were damaged when the road caved into a sinkhole on Wednesday.
That by itself will take time to repair, let alone filling this sinkhole and building a new road.
The details of something like that, construction plans in general take a long time to put together,” Belnap said.
For now, crews are placing more sandbags, and concrete barriers to fortify the wall of bags, because the plan is to keep water flowing down this road.
Belnap said there really isn’t another good option to divert the water.
“It has to go from the east to the west somehow and this road, what it does, is it provides an impermeable surface. It’s not going to cause damage as it goes over the road,” he said.
There will also be someone constantly monitoring the flow and other parts of the city.
Belnap said the idea is to be alerted as quickly as possible if more water runoff turns into a problem.
“We have got someone that’s just roaming in a vehicle 24-7. We’re going in 8-hour shifts,” Belnap said. “Those people are just keeping an eye on the sandbags, keeping an eye on the flow, does anything change? Does anything look weird? And the ability to immediately start calling people in something does change.”
For homeowners here, it means they’ll have to temporarily move while utilities are shut off and repairs are being made.
Schulthies says the homebuilder is working with them to live in another home.
For now, though, it’s just a matter of waiting to move back into the home they really want.
“We are just trying to make sure the best we can,” she said. “We are realizing we’re not going to be really truly living in our home for a long time.”
