Belated Father's Day dinner out / Canal Collapse

Alicia and Jesse had given Bryan and me a promise for a dinner out for our Father's Day gifts and they reminded us of it this week. So we all headed down to Cafe Rio and enjoyed some Mexican food.

Bryan, Jesse, and Alicia chowing down.

Daughter and Father - I'm still sunburned from the 4th of July activities of the prior weekend.

Yesterday (Saturday the 11th), after morning chores, I headed home from Gayle's PT office to find several streets on my regular route home closed and lots of fire department and police vehicles everywhere. Then, when I tried to open the garage door I realized the power was off. Gayle came home a bit later. Soon Alicia came by with Avril for us to babysit. Meanwhile, a helicopter was buzzing overhead and sirens kept sounding. Eventually I went outside with Avril and spoke to a neighbor riding by on a bicycle to find out what was going on. He said the canal above Canyon Road had burst. Gayle, Avril, and I decided to walk across the walking bridge (Logan River) to see what the commotion was. We quickly saw unusual things, like water gurgling up out of cracks in a street near our church building. Then we saw mud everywhere and emergency vehicles. We saw church members with shovels, most returning because they said they couldn't do anything yet. The hillside had given way and the canal and tons of debris and mud and water had crashed into one particular house. A mother and two children are presumed dead and still have not been extracted from the collapsed house (hillside deemed unstable). Besides this home destroyed, there were 8 homes flooded, 11 homes with significant yard damage, and 50 people displaced from residences. The Red Cross set up in our stake center and several are staying there temporarily.

For Church today we held a three ward sacrament meeting. We organized work crews and returned after changing clothes, with tools and ready to work. Here I am in my issued vest and hard hat. Many of us used our Mormon Helping Hands T-shirts. I was one of 6 team leaders from our ward.

These are two of my team members -- Jared and Gayle.

Here are some of us cleaning up a yard on the corner of Crockett Ave. and Canyon Rd. Coincidentally, our friend Sandy Maxson (Alicia and Jesse had lived with Sandy and Richard before moving back to Logan) had once lived in this very house. Small world.

Here a crew tackles mud in front of some of the houses. Up the street on the left was where the home was destroyed. We were not allowed near due to the danger.

Here workers throw mud to the street for the city to move with a Bobcat (small front-end loader).

Jared chats with a ward member between shovelfuls of mud.