OREM, Utah — A day after storms ravaged several northern Utah communities, some residents are still drying out and dealing with the aftermath of the wicked weather.
"Over about a 30 minute period of time, we received about an inch of rain,” said Chris Tschirki, Public Works Director for Orem City. “We would consider it to be greater than a 100 year storm event."
Orem was hit hard by a severe rain and hailstorm. For some, what has been pretty damaging.
"I had a foot-and-a-half of hail piled up in front of my garage door." said Jeffrey Turner. "All the neighbors were grabbing buckets trying to get the water out so we could see what the damage was,”
Nearly two inches of water seeped into Turner's garage, but he was better off than others who live nearby.
"The neighbor to the north of us and the neighbor to the south of us, they had about 2-3 feet of water in their home," he shared.
"It was shocking really,” said Jackson Knapp. “We weren’t expecting it. We thought it would be something really minor."
Knapp's parents own a unit at Stonebrook Condominiums where tenants had recently moved in. Now, their memories and keepsakes are gone.
"It’s been heartbreaking for us as landlords to see them have to go through that," added Knapp. "It's not fun.”
Knapp has had to tear out the carpet in the unit, as well as the drywall. The insulation and doors will also require extensive work.
Across the city, the storm drainage system was overwhelmed.
"These types of events occur so infrequently, I’ve never seen an event like this in Orem in 30 years, but they do happen on occasion,” said Tschirki. “We don’t design anything to handle storms like these. In order to handle that, we would’ve had to probably put 6-7 foot diameter pipes in many roads throughout the city, which would have been very cost prohibitive."
The Orem Skate Park made headlines after turning into a skate pool of sorts, which is what it was supposed to do.
"We have about 20 detention basins that we’ve designed across the city, this is one them, at 400 North 1200 West, there’s also a skate park that is tied to this basin that allows water to be detained in here as well,” explained Tschirki.
While most of the city's infrastructure worked, the storm was just too much.
"We design our system to handle what I would consider to be very reasonable storms,” said Tschirki.
Storm cleanup is expected to last days or longer.
