PROVO, Utah — Nearly a year on from a damaging mudslide in Provo that came out of the Buckley Draw burn scar, city officials say they’re close to completing a project that will protect those neighborhoods from future debris flows.
Nature didn’t look so kindly on those who lived in southeast Provo in August of 2025.
“We saw a bunch of smoke, and were like, ‘That’s the direction of our house,’” said Rachel Whitlock, who’s lived in the Slate Canyon area for the past three years.
She raced back from her mother-in-law’s house to find the Buckley Draw Fire burning high above their own home on August 17.
But what was left behind by the fire became even more frightening just 10 days later.
“We had a huge amount of rain,” Whitlock said. “Shortly after the rain, we started hearing this huge rumbling.”
A microburst dropped nearly an inch of rain in less than thirty minutes on the area, which caused a mudslide to roar down the hillside.
“Everything that it hit - it just pushed over so easily - and it was much more than we ever experienced here at Provo City,” said Jacob O’Bryant with Provo Public Works.
It was also much more powerful than a nearby LDS church could handle. Hundreds pitched in to help clear the knee-high mud from in and around the Slate Canyon Eighth Ward.
The city did its own digging to clear its debris channel.
“There was over 12 feet deep of material - or 10 acre-feet,” said O’Bryant.
O’Bryant is a water resources engineer who is overseeing their plans to prevent any more messes like this one.
He says that last summer, the debris channel ended just above the church, leaving it in the direct path of the flows. But in recent months, they’ve extended the channel 1,500 feet to the north to protect this growing neighborhood, where a new housing development is also going in.
“The channel is now designed to have enough volume to hold the debris flows that we would expect,” O’Bryant said. “It really completes the puzzle.”
He adds that his team restored the channel’s armoring to prevent erosion and they are designing a culvert that will pass under Slate Canyon Road to catch future flows in a large debris basin.
Just down Slate Canyon Road from that culvert area, Whitlock says they’re back into their fully refurbished church after months of being away.
“If you were going there for the first time, you wouldn’t be able to tell - it looks great!” said Whitlock.
Some ominous clouds loomed over the area Thursday and officials say the scar remains a concern.
“Until the vegetation is re-established, there’s always a chance for that debris flow to come down,” said O’Bryant.
But O’Bryant said this channel will bring a tremendous sigh of relief for both their current and future neighbors.
“There were a lot of lessons learned,” said Whitlock. “We feel really happy that the city’s been able to make that investment and we feel much more safe because of it.”
O’Bryant said they are also planning to install concrete mats on the steep sections of the debris channel that will further prevent erosion in future weather events.
