(Photo Credit: Lori Brinkerhoff)
UTAH COUNTY — Some residents in southern Utah County had a major mess to clean up thanks to mudslides from the burn scars of recent fires.
One neighborhood in Spring Lake had to deal with about a foot and a half of mud.
People living near Crooked Canyon had been digging ditches for water but mud and water don’t move the same way. George Brinkerhoff says he learned that the hard way.
“Because it was mud and it was crawling slower, it didn’t shoot across the road. It got into the road, came down and diverted wherever it decided to,” he says.
Luckily for him, none of the muck got into his house but his yard was destroyed. He claims the sound of the mudslide was like that of a freight train coming closer.
“We were sure it was boulders and rocks and mud,” he adds.
Brinkerhoff also says he was woefully unprepared and he didn’t have nearly as many sandbags as he needed.
“We had about 20 sandbags and we needed a thousand,” Brinkerhoff says.
The Utah National Guard placed two thousand sandbags near that property today. Lieutenant Colonel Steve Brenchley says drone footage showed how large the slide was.
“You could just see, it looks like a black ribbon coming down the canyon,” Brenchly says.
The National Guard focused most of their attention on protecting homes in Spring Lake but Brenchley says they also had to send soldiers to place sandbags in Salem.
