EAGLE MOUNTAIN, Utah — In the early morning hours, the Sorensen family in Eagle Mountain got a wake-up call nobody was expecting.
Colby Sorensen was lying in bed after midnight early Tuesday when he heard a crash that was eerily similar to a car accident.
"Kind of the vibration and the pressure that pushed through definitely was just surprising,” said Sorensen.
Sorensen jumped out of bed and opened the bedroom door, and things got worse.
“...and I just heard like water, it sounded like a river,” said Sorensen's wife, Paige. “That was not what I was expecting, to look down the stairs and see a river.”
That river was one of the city’s water lines breaking and tearing right through the home.
“The room that it came through, the window broke. The water was — you can see the line on the wall; it was about three feet high,” Paige said.
The family received a notification on Monday asking residents to conserve water due to water system repairs.
“It just is a waste, big time, for being in the drought that we're in, and the fires we've had," added Paige, "and just having all that water, now it’s just wasted, that's on top of it destroying the basement."
Eagle Mountain City acknowledged what it called a water infrastructure issue that affected a "small number of homes" in the North Ranch neighborhood. They added that crews worked overnight to fix the issue and that water service has been restored.
Cleanup efforts continued Tuesday, including removing mud that had accumulated in front of one home.
“There's some priceless things down there… [Colby] has a bunch of awards, that's kind of from motocross, that's a little bit. I don't know, kind of sucks,” Paige said. "Frustrating for sure, it's going to be a lot of work.”
The Sorensens have yet to scope out the extent of the damage and how much it will cost to repair, but it could have been worse as the family was considering giving their 7-year-old son, Arll, a room of her own downstairs.
“The one where the window actually broke, and the water really ran in, that would be the room that we were going to set him in, and that's kind of the eye opener,” Colby said.
After all this, Arll is just fine with sleeping upstairs.
"That’s why you don’t put kids in the basement!” he exclaimed.
