Flood victim stores, Santa Clara River Flood, St George, UT 84770

Lon & Carrie Henderson
Trebruk Circle St. George, UT

Written by Carrie Henderson

This is Carrie Henderson in Green Valley. I just wanted to share some of our impressions as we reflect on this flood that just took place. We are located along the river here in Green Valley across from Mathis Park. When we built our home five years ago, we were aware that there was a potential for flooding, but built our home well outside the flood plane. Any flooding that we have witnessed in the past 20 years living in St. George has been far from our home or our immediate land. When the rains came and the river began to rise we expected a similar non threatening experience.

Late at night on Sunday, January 10^th it was becoming obvious from the sound of the river roaring in our back yard that we knew that this was getting to be a serious situation. By morning when we went out to look at things it was evident that this wasn’t going to a flood that we had ever witnessed in the past.

We have a lot of acreage behind our home. There is approximately 4-6 acres which is part of our development, but not part of our homes and yards and so there is plenty of room for this river to spread out never imaging it would rage so swift and that even all the land we had would be consumed. There was little sleep, a lot of activity, concern and worry during the week.

What was most amazing to us is that this river took on a life of its own and because of obstacles it had to overcome it would shift itself from one side of the bank to the other changing course from Dixie Drive to Valley View Drive where we live. In just a matter of three days, what was a 20 foot slow moving creek opened up to be about 300 feet wide raging river with 18 to 20 foot drops offs. We lost about 2 acres of land which we had prepared to be used for gardening and we did have a green house which was destroyed. We felt fortunate that only land was lost after seeing the destruction of the homes a few blocks down stream from us.

I really do need to express how incredible it was to see the people rally and come to the aid of those who where were in immediate danger. Our neighbor’s home was being threatened as it was obvious watching the bank drop into the river foot by foot. People just came from nowhere…rallying and working together to get people out of their homes. It was an incredible display of neighborly love and community spirit. The thing that amazed me as well just down river from us where most of the severe damage took place there were just swarms of people moving from home to home just helping. For me…it was something I’ve never seen before and hope I would never see again because it was a catastrophe you can’t imagine happening.

It has been encouraging and wonderful for me to see that the people who lost their homes into the river have such an amazing attitude about the situation. We hope that they will be compensated. There are city people who will work feverishly to help these people. I see the city workers everywhere working hard restoring what they can. It is a tremendous undertaking for the city, but or the most part I have been impressed. I think we need to work diligently to solve some of the problems which compounded this situation –ie: the bridge on Valley View Drive was unfortunately a problem and I think that we hope to see things taken care of and especially those people downstream in Creekside. We did have the sewer line for St George and Santa Clara wash away behind our homes and so the city has been frantically working to get that repaired. I believe that it is something that has been completed and I think people are out and will build up and support their property – those that have lost it.

The rains have stopped for now and the St. George sky is full of sunshine and blue horizons which have helped keep spirits positive in the past week since the worst of the flooding has subsided. The community spirit if full of caring and love for each other and those who were affected have been so encouraged and uplifted as the process of evaluating the damage and planning things to rebuild have started. It was sad to see big, wonderful, historical trees uprooted and floating down the river. These things you can never have back the way they were, but I think the beauty of life is that you move on; you plant more trees, you learn to live with the change and you prepare. You take what you have and make the best of that.

It has been incredible to see how things get rebuilt and restored to the best that is possible. As things settle, I think the emotions of what took place will cease, but the images of that week will never be forgotten.