STOCKTON, Utah — Residents near the mouth of Soldier Canyon are back home Sunday after they were evacuated the previous night due to flooding in the burn scar area from the Jacob City Fire, which burned more than 4,000 acres last month in Tooele County.
One of those residents is Benito Cordova.
Luckily, he said there was no damage to his home, but the water washed out some areas nearby.
"Right here, this big bowl up in there, that's where it all come from," said Cordova.
Cordova said he had to evacuate his home Saturday night around 8 p.m. He was able to return home around 12:30 a.m.
"They just evacuated us because they were scared that the debris dammed up the water and it would breach and it would come down in a big wave," said Cordova.
Cordova drove FOX 13 News up to an area about 200 yards from the home where he has lived in for the past 10 years.
He says what used to be a field with fences up on both sides was damaged by the flooding.
"Where all these rocks come from, and as you can see it washes the soil away and it erodes it until there is nothing but rocks," said Cordova.
This comes a year after flooding also impacted this area, Cordova and his neighbors said.
"That was the worst thing I've ever seen," said Lonnie Bates, Cordova's neighbor. "The flooding last year came down the canyon, all the way through the canyon and busted into our basement windows and went down the stairway and completely destroyed the basement."
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That's why Bates built a 175-foot-long and six-foot-high diversion wall on his property, in hopes of keeping that from happening again.
However, Bates said, the water came down from a different direction this time.
"We find out there is a major stream that is quite a bit bigger than a main stream coming down the canyon," he said. "We've never seen it before where it came down from that direction."
Bates said luckily most of the damage this time around was out by the road in front of his house.
However, he says he doesn't feel prepared quite yet if this kind of flooding happens again.
"We have to go up on the hill, we have to go through and put some berms up there, we have to be able to redirect this water and get it off of the property," he said.
Stockton Police Chief Travis Romney said Sunday afternoon that Soldier Canyon Road was still closed.
Romney said the Tooele County Roads Department was headed up the canyon to assess the damage and figure out how long it will take to fix the road.
