Category: Stories that Inspire

My Monday travels next took me to Riverfront Circle.  I don’t know all the families there, but tried to drop salsa off to who was home.  Not many were because their houses were cleaned out and were drying.

 

Juli Wiest could have been home when I stopped, but the fans were so loud in her house that you couldn’t hear anything but the humming.  Sheetrock was cut about 1-2 feet up from the bottom of the wall and the house was bare.  Her kitchen was still in tact sans flooring, so I stuck the salsa in her fridge and the chips on her counter, then gave her a call to let  her know.  She told me that she has many stories and miracles.  As soon as I get them from her, I’ll put them up. =)

 

Tyler & Mary Dawn Gubler–Mary Dawn was home when I stopped by.  Their basement, yard and pool had been filled with mud.  I remember going by on Saturday and seeing Tyler’s sisters and their sister in law there spraying things off and cleaning up furniture.  My heart was touched because Tyler’s older sister was the YW President when I was a laurel.  How I LOVED her and admired her.  And here she was, still doing the same great service that she had done for me.  It really brought tears to my eyes.  I’ve had  a deep love and appreciation for her all these years!

This picture says so much.  Here it is the night of the flood and sweet Maddie is still smiling in spite of her basement and pool being buried in mud!

 

Ernie & LeAnn Hafen-  No one was home at their house Monday morning.  The walls were stripped to about 4 feet.  And the house smelled.  Really almost every home I went into that day smelled, and so did the yards.  The mud, water, and days of sitting wet had just brought about the worse stench ever.  It smelled like horse manure everywhere.  It really broke my heart to see Ernie and LeAnn’s.  They really lost everything.  I visited with one of their daughters and she said that the one tender mercy and really the only thing that was saved was that a computer guy was able to pull off the data from her computer so the last few years of digital photos were saved.   LeAnn is one of those great scrapbookers and had actually put all their scrapbooks in one of their gun safes.  Well, it turns out that the safes are fireproof, but they are not waterproof.  All of her scrapbooks were destroyed.  That and a few other meaningful treasures are the greatest losses.  Couches, towels, furniture are just things and can be replaced, but there are a few treasures that are not irreplaceable.  Those are the hard ones.  And Ernie & LeAnn lost it all– all material possessions, everything in the home, gone.  Just plain old heart breaking!

 

Here’s their kitchen and their living room:

 

 

Brad & Tode Hafen–Ran into Brad on Wednesday dropping off salsa again.  His back yard was hit except the pool which is weird.  They had a little bit come into their house, but mostly had damage to their playhouses, and waterfall/pond area.  He definitely had some yard work to do, but when I gave him a hug and said, ‘How are you doing?”  He said, “We’re GREAT!  Life is GREAT!”  Yes, these people are just amazing!

 

Dan & Pat Frei– Along with Brad and Tode, Dan & Pat got away with minimal damage.  Some in their yard and a little in their house, but don’t for a minute think that they are unscathed.  With their neighbors, friends and ward members hit so hard, this has taken an emotional toll on them, too.  Pat always has a great, positive outlook, inspite of  all the struggles they have been through lately, I believe that their house being somewhat preserved from the damage was a real tender mercy for them.

 

Kerry & Barb Johnson– I didn’t catch them home either, in my travels.  Left salsa in their fridge.  There were a lot of people working in their yard trying to clean it up and get it back to running.  I do know that Barb’s birthday was in the midst of this whole mess.  There are better ways to spend a birthday!  Hoping that she can celebrate in finer fashion next year!

 

The friends and families in Riverfront Circle have been incredible.  In spite of the damage, loss, and difficulty, they are rising above with positive attitudes.

 

Here is a video of Riverfront Circle.  It is being filmed from the roof of Brad & Tode’s house.  It starts looking into Ernie & LeAnn’s yard, you will see Johnson’s garage being hammered.  When they turn around, you can see the water in Tode & Brad’s back yard as it goes through their playhouses and their water feature.  The water that came through Ernie & LeAnn’s yard came from Smith’s and Dunkley’s.  So you can see the volume of water that came quite a distance and damaged so many!

 

 

 

My first stop Monday (Day 6) was at the Gubler’s house.  Sue is a dear friend.  I grew up with her siblings.  They had recently rebuilt this home that was her family’s years ago.  Their house was not really in the direct line of water.  They were flooded by an interesting means.  When the water came through toward Riverfront, it hit the block wall around the little community.  The wall to the left of the entrance ironically protected Shan’s sister, Cami’s house, from the flood damage.  However, as the water hit the wall, it followed it to the left and began to run behind the Barben’s house and into Shan and Sue’s back yard.  The fact that the back yard was dug out for a walk out basement, provided a nice “hole” for the water to puddle in. And puddle it did, and then filled up their basement.

The Gubler’s basement contained their office and scrapbooks among all the other furniture and belongings.  It took 6 pumps 6 hours to drain all the water out of the basement.  Their home was not even drained until the next day– one of the last to be drained and unloaded.  As the items came out of the basement, covered in mud, painstaking work then began.  Many people began spraying items off.  But the greatest gift were the many people that would take photos, journals and business papers and go through them one by one in an attempt to save them.  And many were saved.

 

On top of all this, the Gubler’s daughter, Jeni, was due with her first child.  The flood happened on Tuesday and Jenni was due on Friday.  You can imagine Sue’s feelings of panic with her house upside down and knowing that she needed to be there for her daughter.  Well, one of those tender mercies was that baby Olivia knew the plight of her grandmother and waited long enough for her to get settled.  (To read the sweet story by Jeni and see the photos of the home and the damage and the help, click here to read Jeni’s wonderful blog post.)

 

That Monday morning when I popped in on Sue, she was sitting at her kitchen table with a single friend.  This sweet lady was helping Sue take photos out of a large tote and put them in ziploc bags.  These hundreds (if not thousands) of photos had been cleaned and saved by so many.  Sue just expressed gratitude that she was able to get this far, had this much help and if she could just get her kitchen area clean, she would feel okay about leaving to go welcome a new baby.  Sue always has a smile on her face and is just one tremendous woman!

 

 

Here are just a few tidbits of info I’ve picked up as I’ve been around the houses.

 

• By Day 3 all of the homes had all the stuff cleared out of them, the carpet ripped up and the sheet rock cut out or taken down.  An insurance adjuster who had come to one of the homes said he had never seen anything like it.  Usually he pulls up and people are sitting in their yard waiting for someone to come and do something about it and get the professionals to come and clean it up.  He said, “you are definitely a special breed here.”  Bahahaha….he has NO idea! =)

• Another insurance adjuster that I believe looked at Ernie and LeAnn’s home said that if they had have paid professionals to come in and clean up what was done there, it would have cost them $50,000 just for the clean up.  So if you don’t think these volunteers have made a difference,  you’re wrong!  But I think that more than saving money, they have lifted hearts and given hope!  That right there is PRICELESS!

• The Bostwick’s house has been officially condemned.  These two pictures below are their house.  They are directly behind the business complex and took a direct hit  from the beginning.

• Tires from the automotive store on the main road were found in Shelby Frei’s field down below the Anderson’s house.  It’s also got an extra foot or two of dirt/mud.  Kent and Shelby had just planted and put new piping in a few days before.  Robbin is planning on taking a metal detector through the field.  She figures there’s a bunch of buried treasure in there now.  She’s probably right.  As I was handing out ice and water to a guy in the Johnson’s yard, he uncovered a PEZ dispenser.  And based on all the food I saw in Dunkley’s yard, there’s bound to be a few more good things buried in that field.  Someone may just geocache that, huh?

•  Many of the homes with basements had them filled to the top of their stairs (basement ceiling).  Here’s some pictures of the Westbrook’s basement.   She is Ernie and LeAnn’s daughter.  Double whammy in this family.  (Thanks to Martsi Strong for these pictures.)
  

• Ernie and LeAnn’s house does not have a basement.  The water line on their main level was at 5 feet.

• LeAnn and Ernie also have a daughter who lives on Arrowhead Circle that got hit hard.  So sad that they couldn’t even help each other because there were both buried in water and mud.  Here’s her daughter’s house.  She teaches preschool so a lot of her preschool families have been coming and helping clean and dry off school stuff.

• It’s Swiss Days at the end of this month and all through Santa Clara are cute wooden cows.  They are symbolic of all the cattle in Switzerland.  Different families and businesses put their cows out for the whole month of September. The streets look so cute with all the cows lining them.   This cow stands in the Lang’s yard.  Lois made sure I took a picture of it because with all the water and all the damage, this cow did not move.  I think it’s rather symbolic of the stubborn Dutchman’s.  Sometimes, you just can’t get them to move on an idea– especially if it comes to parting with their money. ;o)

 

One last tidbit to support the cow theory…..As I drove past LeAnn and Ernie’s on Monday, things were almost all tidied up and here stood this:

Maybe these cows really are representative of our little town.  Just a tad of comfort and normalacy among all the tragedy and discouragement.  It almost says, “you can knock us down, but you can’t take us out.”

Ironically, my missionary son sent this quote in a letter to my mom this week:

“We cannot expect to learn endurance if we have developed the habit of quitting when things get difficult.”  –Robert D. Hales

I think Santa Clara is winning the “endurance” prize.  From pioneers to current day, enduring to the end seems to be what they do best.

On day 3, I ventured down to help out.  At this point, I had mostly been taking pictures on my way to or home from work.  Feeling guilty, I knew I needed to  help out.  I signed in at the City Office and headed down the road.  I was stopped by Robbin Frei who said she could use some help.  I jumped in her little electric cart and we were off on Laundry Duty.

 

For the last several days, Robbin had been picking up people’s muddy laundry, taking it to her house, power spraying the mud off, then having those who wanted to wash come and get the laundry, wash it, give it back to Robbin, and then she would deliver it back to the home owner. [There were many people who were power washing to get the bulk of the mud off and also a bunch of people actually washing the clothes.  Robbin was mainly the pick up, drop off and delivery gal.  Someone had to keep track of who’s laundry was who’s and she had a great system going.]

 

We were on a pick up and delivery cycle.  We stopped at Tori’s house.  Her house was still being cleaned out and there was a bunch of laundry in her driveway.  Tori had recently moved into the home and most of the bags were clothes from her kids over the years that were in her garage and had not been gone through or unloaded yet.  Some of the clothes were in bags and didn’t get muddy, but were stinky/musty smelling.  A lot of them had mud on them, but had also been sitting wet for a few days.  Not pretty.  So we loaded up her clothes and headed to Robbin’s house.  I was going to power wash them after we delivered the clean ones.  We dropped off Tori’s stuff at Robbin’s, grabbed the clean items  from her garage and took off for delivery because we had more clothes to get from Tori’s.  (The little electric cars can only hold so much.)

 

As we were driving to drop off the clean clothes, Robbin told me about the laundry angels.  As one who struggles to keep up with laundry, let alone get it all the whites to actually remain white, I figured ANYONE who was washing their clothes were laundry angels.  I was absolutely correct.  But I learned that there was a little more to the story.

 

Robbin told me that years ago Debi Frei told her that when she would add sleeves to prom dresses for young women so they would have a modest dress for the dance, she would say a little prayer before she began sewing so that the dress would be lovely and acceptable to the young woman.  Debi happened to be one of the “laundry angels” that was taking all the muddy clothes and washing and folding them for others.  Robbin had dropped off some of the Schmutz’s clothes to her, among which were her little boy’s white Sunday shirts.  I don’t have a picture of their actual laundry, but here is a picture of the Schmutz’s backyard as people were unloading stuff out of their basement that was filled with mud.  I remember looking at the pile of muddy stuff and seeing games, backpacks, sleeping bags– stuff I figured her kids used and that based on all the kids stuff I was seeing that her kids stayed downstairs.  Looking at all that muddy stuff just nearly broke my heart.

 

 

I’m pretty sure that those white Sunday shirts and kids clothes were among this pile that came out of the downstairs.  Robbin said that when she picked up the clothes from Debi, she was stunned.  She said, as she began to tear up, that those white shirts looked like they had just come out of the JC Penney’s package.  Their clothes looked as bright as if they were brand new.  Robbin remembered Debi’s story of praying over prom dresses from years ago and asked Debi if she had said a prayer over this laundry.  Her answer was, “yes.”  Robbin tearfully said, “you have no idea…the laundry angels are REALLY helping us.  You just can’t believe what is happening.”

 

Well, I could.  There has been a tangible spirit as I have been driving through the valley.  There is no despair, no anger, just a spirit of work, unity, kindness, and friendliness.  But I had NO idea that laundry angels existed!  I’ve needed them for YEARS!!

 

As we pulled in to drop off some clean laundry to the Grant’s, there were several angels in her front yard cleaning off items from her house.  We told her we had her clean clothes and where could we put them.  She said, “inside the front door.”  As I traipsed across her muddy front lawn, I stood on the porch and opened the door.  Her entry way had a crystal clean floor with a few clean items on it.   I looked down at my feet and realized that I was NOT going to touch ANYTHING that was clean with my dirty feet.  This woman deserved some CLEAN space.  So I piled the laundry just inside the front door, blocking her stairway to upstairs.   As I turned, she hugged me and thanked me.  I had done NOTHING….felt a little dumb.  She was SO grateful….and who wouldn’t be??!!   I’m sure that knowing your kids have some clean clothes to wear to school meant so much when you were standing in mud trying to wash off every muddy item you were attempting to save or that have significance.

 

We left the Grant’s to drop off stuff to Sue Gubler.   She also thanked us and said, “you have to come and see this!  These clothes we are getting back are so CLEAN!”   We went into Sue’s front living room where she showed us this:

 

 

The dresses on the far left, Sue told us, were some dresses her mother had made.  They were treasured keepsakes.  We were looking at these piles admiring how really clean they were and Sue said, “you don’t understand!  These were COVERED in mud!  RED MUD!  It is a miracle!”  Robbin and I were trying not to cry and Robbin said, “it’s the laundry angels!”

 

I had to run and grab my phone and take a picture because I realized that there were many miracles taking place.  Miracles in the smallest things, like laundry.  I knew it was important for me to document them because I knew there were a lot more miracles taking place.  But I marveled at how the Lord had His hand in helping those who where trying to do something kind for others.  He has taken what they are doing and expanding their abilities.

 

Robbin and I then grabbed another bunch of laundry from Tori’s and headed back to Robbin’s house.  When we got there, Aubrey and Amber Ence were there taking the clothes to wash.  The women of their ward had volunteered to do some laundry, too.  They had their own powerwashers, so I ended up not having to powerwash, but they took a literal truck bed load of clothes to distribute for washing.  And I knew a little secret.  I knew the Laundry Angels on the other side would be assisting all the Laundry Angels on THIS side with their task.

 

*NOTE:  If you have never experienced Southern Utah Red Dirt/Mud it is something that once it gets in, it never gets out.  White socks are always a light shade of pink.  It’s also been said that “when you get Dixie Red Sand between your toes, it never comes out.”  Meaning, once you’ve lived here, the spirit always carries with you.

 

*Another NOTE:  Home Depot donated every bottle of “Iron Out” which is a laundry product that supposedly gets the Red Dirt out.  By all reports I’ve heard, it works great!  The store is empty though.  People have tried to go down and buy it.  I think they have either donated or sold it all.  Can’t wait to get my own bottle!!  PLEASE support Home Depot!  They have been SOO generous and giving!

 

And if you’re like me, now that you know Laundry Angels exist, you’ll be praying for their assistance, too!

There have been so many amazing stories during this flood.  These are just some that I have experienced or heard told to me.  I know there are MANY more.  I hope I can collect a few of them.  It is just amazing to see how people respond under the most difficult of circumstances.  Here are some great stories:

 

When Your Basement Fills Up

 

The night the flood hit, I headed down to where my family was working.  I was taking pictures all along the way.  As I neared the Dunkley’s house, one of my friends said, “you need to go see inside.”  So I walked in with their daughter-in-law.  It was getting dark outside, kind of dusky.  But in the house it was dark.  The power was off because the ceiling of their basement had collapsed.  Water had filled to the top of their stairs and soaked the drywall. The basement ceiling collapsed, pulling the wires out of the walls and ceiling, too.  As I came in, Lisa was inside her kitchen doing the dishes.  Someone came in with a spot light and headed downstairs to light the room in the basement so they could keep working.  A candle was lit in the kitchen, giving off very little light.

 

Lisa said to me.  “I know it seems crazy doing your dishes in the middle of a mess like this, but I am just overwhelmed and don’t know what to do, so I’m doing what I know how.”   I found it interesting and profound somewhat.  She was just calm and was doing what came instinctively when tragedy struck– Just clean something and do something.  Then she said, “a reporter interviewed me today.  He asked how I could be so calm.  Well, what do you do?  You can’t change anything.  Crying won’t solve it.  So we’re just going to calmly go about it.  And besides, look at all these people that are here to help.”

 

As I went down the stairs, they were covered in mud and insulation.  It was hard to even walk down them.

 

 

I peered into the basement and found insulation and what I assume was drywall underneath it in a pile.

 

 

They were trying to light up the room and take some 5 gallon buckets and begin scooping out the insulation and handing it out the window to someone.  But because it was getting so dark, I think they may have waited until the next day to do it.  At least I saw them dumping buckets of insulation into the dumpster the next day.

 

 

On Saturday, I stopped by the Dunkley’s delivering ice and water.  It was a hot day and the wet mud made things even more humid.  But the worst part was the smell.  For some reason everywhere we went on Saturday, things were really smelly.  I don’t know if it was manure from the fields or if the stuff buried in the mud was starting to mildew or decay, but it smelt like manure or something.  And here were all these people in the yards working, shoveling dirt.  Lisa was on the side of the yard, re-aligning the stepping stones between her yard and the Smith’s.  She had a smile on her face, was grateful for cold ice, and more than that, kept saying how appreciative she was of all these people helping out.  Two young girls had been shoveling and doing some hard labor.  She gave them permission to stop that and asked them if they could just clean out around her bushes.  She pointed to the pile they had cleaned out and how grateful she was for these girls.  I was in awe.  There was still a bunch of mud in her yard and it is going to take a while to get it all out.  She said her house was all gutted and cleaned out and drying.  A cheerful disposition among the muck.  How I admire her!

 

The visit to the Dunkley’s house was powerful for me.  I learned that when things go bad, we do what we can do instinctively as women….our dishes or our simple daily, motherly routines that can bring us some peace.   I learned that LOTS of people in your neighborhood show up and some of them have a clue where to start and where to begin, which is nice for those of us so overwhelmed that we are frozen.

 

And I learned that the Dunkley’s are just strong, good people who handle adversity with a sense of humor and good old fashioned work.  Lisa’s great-great grandfather was Andrew Gibbons.  It just so happens that he was one of the first missionaries called to Santa Clara, and I am guessing could have been around when the first big flood came through here.   He had a tough life.  I’ve read his stories.  He and his wife were amazing….and so is their great great granddaughter.  She has been blessed with that same spirit.  It shows in her face!

 

Sometimes, you just gotta do your dishes.  Even if it doesn’t make sense.  It brings peace to a weary soul.

 

I watched history unfold again today.  Yes, it’s  9/11, but this time, the history making is in my little town.  The dike broke by the Middle School sending a torrent of water down through our town flooding over 30 homes and businesses.  I just happened to get stopped and detoured just as the dike broke.  I pulled off and took pictures and videos as I made my way to work.  I was astounded and shocked at what I was seeing.  And I knew right where this wall of water was headed…..straight to the homes of my dear friends and neighbors. Here is the footage of the flooding I shot today.  These first few are of the Little league field and then looking south toward where the breach in the dike is.

I pulled around past the high school.  Stopped at the Middle School to get pictures of the broken dike, but they wouldn’t let me through.  So I went down to the library and walked down the hill and shot these videos:

 

This was the beginning of a complete disaster. Amazed at what the power of water can do.