SANDY, Utah – A 12-inch water-main caused a big mess in Sandy Sunday after a break sent thousands of gallons of water and hundreds of pounds of mud into nearby streets and homes.
Crews have been working around the clock to mitigate damage caused by a water-main break on Intermountain Healthcare’s Alta View Hospital campus Sunday afternoon.
ServPro of West Valley City received a call for flooding in the area of 9600 South and 1100 East, below the hospital campus, around 12:30 Monday morning.
“You could see the rain gutters just overflowing with mud and silt right away,” said Marcus Eoff, a manger with ServPro West Valley City. “We had about 24 inches of mud throughout the street itself.”
Crews quickly realized the flooding had extended to two nearby homes, dumping thousands of gallons of water and hundreds of pounds of mud and silt into the basements.
“Let me just go look really quick,” one homeowner can be heard saying in a video she recorded while water was flowing into their home.
“It’s leaking around the tub and on the tiles, I mean I don’t really know for sure what damage there is,” she continued as she walked around the downstairs of her home. Towels, blankets and pillows could be seen shoved against the windows and openings to try and slow the flow of water coming in.
Crews had classified the water as ‘Category three’ or ‘risk for full contamination.’
“[The water] comes across such a large area that we don’t know what’s in the dirt, what’s in the sidewalk and everything that it came across,” Eoff explained. “So, with stuff like that, we’ve got to play it safe, any materials that it touched we’ve got to remove.”
Eoff said they worked throughout the night to remove the contaminated water and gut each basement -- work continued well into Monday evening.
“We’re just trying to keep as much stress off of the homeowners as we can,” Eoff said. “Ultimately, this was not their fault so for them to try to deal with this, we’re here to try to take some of that heartache off.”
In a statement to Fox 13, Intermountain Healthcare said they take full responsibility for what happened, and they have been working closely with the families since they found out.
‘Intermountain Healthcare is taking responsibility for it, working with family to take care of them and cover clean up and restoration costs,’ -Jess Gomez, Spokesperson Intermountain Healthcare
While progress has been made, crews believe the initial clean-up phase will take three to five days. As of now, there is no word on what caused the break.
