- Whitney Redd filmed a wave of water crashing through her basement window
- It came amid a historic storm on Tuesday night
A family’s Utah home was flooded when a massive wall of water crashed through their basement window during a once-in-a-century flood just two months after they had completed renovations.
Amazing images shared online by Whitney Redd shows her sons rushing to get a keyboard and other supplies from a basement office Tuesday night as water began leaking in through a window.
She could hear her scream, “Oh no,” as water soaked the floor of their Orem home before her husband realized their efforts were futile.
“It’s going to be destroyed,” he warns, shouting to his family, “Go back, go back.”
Almost immediately after his warning, a wall of water crashed through the window, sending an office chair flying through the air and causing Redd to scream in fear.
The Redd family had renovated the basement of their Orem home two months earlier
Astonishing footage shared online shows a wall of water crashing through a family’s basement window on Tuesday evening
She said the flooding occurred in the basement of her three-bedroom home in Orem, which cost nearly $850,000 and which the family uses as an apartment for her in-laws.
Red told KSL-TV How her family went to check on the in-laws, while in the evening a storm swept over the city of almost 100,000, dumping huge amounts of rain and hail the size of golf balls.
“We ran over there and saw something leaking,” Redd said of the family’s discovery in the basement.
Her husband then started “trying to climb through the window, get the hail out, get the rain out, just get stuff out,” she said, when he realized it was useless.
‘[My husband is] like “It’s coming down too fast. There’s no way we’re going to get all of this out. Get out of the room, get out of the room,” she said told Fox 13.
Then the family moved back and the water flowed in.
Redd would later describe the incident as “surreal, just surreal, [with] all that water coming in.
“We had recently been to Niagara Falls and it looked exactly the same at our house,” she said.
There was about 20 to 24 inches of water in the house, but no injuries were reported.
“Everybody’s safe, it’s just a house,” Redd said. “It really sucks, but it’s just a house.
She said her family has since installed fans in the basement to dry things out, and neighbors have helped clean out the apartment, removing the floorboards and most everything else.
Unfortunately, the flood occurred just two months after the Redd family had renovated their basement due to a sewer overflow.
“Now they’re back to square one. It’s devastating,” Redd’s sister said. wrote in an online fundraiser to help the family with the second round of renovation costs.
As of Sunday evening, more than $5,000 had been raised for the Redd family as city residents continue to clean up damage from the storm, which dropped 0.75 inches (1.9 centimeters) of rain in just 20 minutes on Tuesday.
That’s close to the desert city’s monthly average of 2.4 inches, while the city only receives about 33 inches of rain annually.
