UTAH
One home flooded after river overflows in the upper Ogden Valley
Mar 16, 2023, 12:21 PM | Updated: 2:53 pm
The river that flooded due to ice chunks in Eden, Utah, the morning of March 16, 2023. (Photo credit: Nikki Wolthuis)
(Photo credit: Nikki Wolthuis)
EDEN, Utah — Early morning flooding sent emergency crews to an Eden neighborhood on Thursday.
And the flooding lead to those crews sending a message to anybody with snow drifts against their home.
Deputy Chief David Reed with the Weber Fire Department said a ditch was overflowing at around 6:30 a.m. Thursday morning.
“There was too much volume for the ditch to contain itself,” Reed told KSL. There were also ice chunks in the river that added to the overflow.
Fire crews diverted the water until the Weber County Water Department arrived with heavy equipment.
Water from the flooded river did not enter homes according to Reed. But with water escaping the boundaries of the river and adding to the already soaked ground, that’s where the problem for homeowners can arise.
“The ground is so wet that some of the homes are getting seepage,” Reed said.
The message? Clear the snow
This type of water accumulation can’t be addressed with sandbags or sump pumps. So homeowners need to get out and remove the snow that may have piled up against the foundation of their homes.
“The sump pups can’t keep up, and so the sump pumps are pumping water, but the water in the ground is just going through the foundation into the basement, faster than they can pump out,” Chief Reed told KSL.
At least one of the homes in this Eden neighborhood has a foot of water in it.
“If you have a 12 foot snow bank up against your house, you need to move that away from the house so that it’s not melting right next to the foundation,” Reed said.
“The best thing to do in that case is to get the snow away from the house.”
