DRAPER, Utah — Ryan Archer's basement is a complete loss after flooding in Draper on August 3rd. With more than $100,000 in damages, flooding took away some things you just can’t put a price on.
“All the pictures, like all my wedding pictures, it's all gone," he said. "They are my wife and my baby pictures because they weren't digital back then, they're all gone. So it's just hard to put a number on that.”
This week, the U.S. Small Business Administration announced that any residents or businesses in Salt Lake, Davis, Utah, Tooele, Summit, Morgan and Wasatch counties can apply for hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal loans to recover from damage left by flooding on August 3rd and 4th.
“I think a lot of times people at first hear the word loan, and they kind of back away from it," said Burl Kelton, a public information officer for the SBA. "But really, this is one of the best opportunities that a taxpayer has to be able to have resources available to them for their recovery.”
Archer is bummed he has to take out a loan to fix his basement due to what he believes is negligence on Draper’s part.
“Put a wall in there, a drainage system. Just do something different because what they did obviously didn't work," he said.
However, Bret Millburn, the assistant city manager for Draper, says what happened was a once-every-500-years kind of event and to build infrastructure to stop that kind of flooding is not feasible.
“Our systems are designed to handle that," he said. "What you had on August 3rd was something that is just beyond comprehension.”
The Disaster Loan Outreach Center has been set up at the Fitzgerald House at 1160 E. Pioneer Road in Draper. It will be open weekdays from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and closed on Indigenous Peoples' Day on Monday, October 9th. Anyone can come by the temporary office to get help applying for a loan.
