The Santa Clara River flood of 2005, St George, UT 84770

Les & Annette Taylor
Sunbrook, St. George, UT

Interview with Les Taylor

During the Christmas holidays our yard was as we had known it, but the river was higher than usual and we watched it rise to about four feet at one time, but then it went down again. After the first of the year, as we started to have an increased number of storms, I noticed the river slowing coming up in height and it started to cover some rocks on the shore on Sunday evening. We called some neighbors to alert them of our concern, but they already knew.

Then early Monday morning we found that the water covered the entire lower level of our yard right up to the lower red rock wall. This part of our lawn was in the flood plain and was completely under water. On Monday morning there was also an increase in the speed of the water. As the rain kept coming we noticed that now there were rows of old, dead logs starting to float down past us. Trees were falling and floating by in the swift waters. . We were surprised at the increasing number of logs which were floating by us. Soon they became lodged in an area just upstream from us and started to change the channel. The river continued to get wider and spread clear over on the No. 1 Blackrock hole on Sunbrook.

Luckily for us a lot of the water on Monday was diverted away from our home and banks. By late afternoon the water had receded somewhat and we felt better. We went to bed that night feeling much better. It looked as if the worst was over and at the worst we would have a sandy beach on the lower part of our yard

On Tuesday we continued to sandbag. Volunteers appeared to help, but all the help was diverted to our neighbors home which was more threatened than ours. Many loads of sand bags were unloaded to help our neighbors. As it turned out our banks received more washing and destruction.

Suddenly a lot of cottonwoods trees adjacent to us started to fall….two of our huge trees in our yard tipped over and immediately floated downstream in less than 20 seconds. As the water came higher and we noticed a large pile of logs and trees on the opposite side of the bank. Two large trees became stuck and more logs came and became connected causing an obstruction on that side of the river. Eventually it broke and the whole force of the river changed and headed toward our banks of our property. The washing that occurred was incredible. It took a yard every minute.
We had one large tree left and ….the interesting thing about this tree. The tree was trimmed and on one of the branches where it was cut, the tree showed a smiling face. Ironically when it would rain the water would tend to run down and cover up part of the smile to make a sad face. This tree provided shade, beauty and swinging fun. We did love it

About 8:00 pm our huge tree with the swing started to fall. Strangely it didn’t fall straight down— it fell at a oblique – 45 degree angle and miraculously it directed the water back to the main channel and saved the rest of our banks and our neighbor’s home as well.

We were advised that we should start packing and as we felt the home was unsafe we did evacuate and we stayed the night with the Hansen’s across the street from our home. A couple visiting one of our neighbors came and helped us moved out some stuff. We took some clothes, photos, important papers and a little furniture. Someone came up the next day and said that he thought our home was safe enough to move back in—that is unless more of the banks fell into the river.

When we saw the back of our house we found a good part of our back yard was just gone and destroyed. The east corner of our home was threatened more than the rest of our house. The river had washed right up to about 10-12 feet from our bedroom window on that side. It dropped straight down about 12-15 feet to the river. The west side is comparatively safe as not as much washing took place there because of our large tree protecting it.

Our view is very different…..more beautiful in a way, but we will miss our yard and our beautiful trees and the pleasure they gave us.

It was a very trying time in our lives and made us think of the great powers and destructive powers the river has and caused you change the way your think about your home…..some things you had never had to think about before. We hope that we can get things remedied so we can feel safe in our home again. We feel fortunate and we are grateful that we still have our home and feel so badly for those who lost theirs.