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Show G T TXTXTTC4 rIXT yAtiax *ic Vy‘oote,t,o4ot Volume 7 • Number 26 ha - Businessmen's Assoc. Meeting Wed July 6 • 2 pm @ Gunnison City Hall Senior Shopping & Dr. Trip to Richfield Wed July 6 The bus will leave the Senior Center at 1 pm. Call the day before to secure your spot on the bus. Email items for What's Happening in Gunnison Valley to aazetteagtelco.net Address Service Requested e Presorted Standard U.S. Postage PAID Permit No. 11 Gunnison, UT ECRWSS 2 Thursday, June 29, 2011 Copy Price • One dollar Gunnison homes damaged by flood waters By JOHN HALES Patriotic Fireside Sun July 3 • 7 pm Gunnison Stake Center the speaker will be LT COL Jay Hess, USAF a Viet Nam POW *lc GUNNIS ON—Jeff and Lynett Piep were supposed to have moved out of their house last weekend to go live with Jeff's ailing parents in Mayfield. Across the street, Ashley and Chasity Edwards should have been finishing a basement bedroom to make way for a baby the couple is expecting in two months. Instead, both families spent the weekend bailing floodwater out of their homes. "It's a mess. It's a mess," Lynette Piep said. The Pieps had sold their home. The new owners were supposed to have moved in this week. But the buyers backed out after water started seeping up through the basement floor almost two weeks ago. "I don't know what I'm gonna do, because it's put me in a bind now," Lynett Piep said. "I'm committed to go to my in-laws. Now we kind of have a damper on our plans." For the Edwardses, the flooding, also in the basement, started about three weeks ago. "It's pretty stressful," Chasity Edwards said. "We have to finish at least one room down there so we have room for the baby, but we haven't dared do that yet," she said. Until Sunday, the neighborhood didn't look like a flood area. None of the land around the homes was water logged. That changed a little when the Sanpitch changed its course Sunday night. Part of the stream began running down an adjacent street, flooding nearby fields and pooling where the street dead-ended at a berm that had been built several weeks ago to contain the river. But the flooding at the Pieps' and Edwards' came from underneath. Holes knocked through basement cement floors to install pumps exposed pools of water underneath the homes where dirt and rock should be. Based on the number and size of the pumps, both homes together are pumping out more than 200,000 gallons per day. o n a es unnison Va ey azette Jeff Piep checks on machinery installed in a hole knocked through his basement floor to pump water out of his home which is seeping in from underneath the foundation. Over the weekend, the pumps couldn't match the flood's pace. "The holes were filling up faster than the pumps could keep up with. We had about three or four inches of water," Ashley Edwards said. The flooding wasn't completely unexpected. The same thing happened to the Edwardses last year. "It was worse this year, but it was pretty bad last year," Chasity Edwards said. "We had water for six weeks." So this year, she said, "We weren't expecting it this bad, but we knew we'd have waSee FLOODING, Page 4 Former POW to speak at fireside The annual patriotic fireside will be held this Sunday, July 3rd at 7 p.m. at the Gunnison Stake Center. This year's featured speaker will be Lieutenant Colonel Jay C. Hess USAF (RET). As a Captain in the Air Force, Hess completed 31 1/2 combat missions over North Vietnam. His F-105 was downed by ground fire near the China border northeast of Hanoi on 24 Aug 1967. He was held prisoner of war for five and one half years in the Hanoi Hilton. He was released by the North Vietnamese on 14 Mar 1973. Hess was born May 9, 1930 in Ogden, Utah and graduated from Davis High School, Kaysville, Utah in 1948. He attended Weber State University in 1949, Brigham Young University in 1950, University of Utah in 1952 and received a B.S. Degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT), Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio in 1962. He served in the Western States Mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 195052. He is married to Michelle Martin of Layton, Utah. They are the parents of two daughters, Shantay, born on Veterans Day 1987, and Kenzley, born in 1996. He is the father of five married children: Cameron Hess, Heather Nibley, Dr. Warren Hess, Holly Dunn and Lt. Col. Jay C. Hess Heidi Johnson. Lieutenant Colonel Hess retired from the United States Air Force on 1 Nov 1973. ar • en me unnison Ta ey azette The water is running swift and wide across the east side bridge where portions of the sidewalk have been washed away. City will declare emergency By John Hales ourtesy oto a ene eff Seth Hendrickson poses beside Tow Mater, the tow truck famous in Disney's Cars. Seth found this old truck behind his parents' house ten years ago and took it to the farm. When the new movie was advertised Seth thought his little truck could be made to look like Mater so he created it. Seth's Mater will also be featured in the 4th of July Parade on Saturday. tc©, KYMCO Imo 4111‘■ GUNNISON—Gunnison Mayor Lori Nay says she plans to declare an emergency because of the city's recent flooding. In conjunction with a similar declaration from Sanpete County, she said, Gunnison will officially submit an emergency declaration to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) next week. "What it does is acknowledge the preparations and prevention that we've done to divert any kind of emergency situation. And it gives us the possibility of funds to mitigate the river upriver in the future," she said. In other words, she doesn't want the city to have to take the kinds of steps it had to take this year to prevent flooding, and wants the federal government's help in finding more permanent solutions. "If I can get FEMA to agree with us that we have a mitigation issue, then I can get some help to do some things about that," she said. Gunnison was pretty much on its own to try to save property and homes from this year's all-at-once runoff. "I don't think anybody understands how much we've done to make sure they're protected," she said. "It's been an ongoing issue for two and a half months." That's when city officials _ GIC Now Out Sale! GIC Motor Sport 528-7271 • 51 W 200 N, Gunniso See EMERGENCY, Page 5 p i. Choose Your Own Path ,, began discussions about what to do to prepare for flooding as winter gave way to spring, then to late spring, with mountain snows not melting and, in fact, accumulating more. The city built dikes across the roads at 200 East and 200 West, where the river was most likely to divert if it overran its banks. The river was dredged, with the contents pulled up to build the dikes. As waters rose, city workers surveyed the situation often, sometimes dredging more, sometimes clearing debris that cluttered the waterway. "It's taken a lot of Donald's [Childs] and Matt's [Reber] time," the mayor said. About two weeks ago, t All Kymco ATVs 6 Scooters 8elow Cost, ctor Farm Equipment • Used Cars & Trucks • Can Am & Kymco Ants • H qvam ill> .0111•111P-0"; 1 |
