The 1989 report says two significant slides pushed debris out of Stone and Barton creeks, causing around $4 million in damages. The area avoided widespread catastrophe, but the report says, “water lines, culverts, and personal property in that community were subjected to damage.”īountiful also suffered extensive damage. In nearby Fruit Heights, 75 people were evacuated that spring after officials started to worry about a landslide in Baer Canyon. Farmington’s public works director told UPI that officials evacuated the park “because of the number of people there and we weren’t sure what the slide would do.” The slide also caused over $1 million in damage to public facilities.Īn article from United Press International from May of 1983 described the Rudd Canyon slide as “a 20-foot-high wall of mud” that forced the evacuation of the Lagoon Amusement Park. The landslide caused $3 million in damages to homes alone, as it leveled eight houses and damaged 35 others. “That caused a bunch of soils on the sides of these side canyons to become saturated and mobilize to debris slides, which then became debris flows as they entered flooding channels.”Īmong the areas hardest hit was Farmington, where a landslide tore through nearby Rudd Canyon and scattered dirt and debris across nearly 18 acres of land, according to the 1989 UGS report. It just heated up way too fast,” McDonald said. The already damp mountain soil couldn’t absorb the record snowpack, as the state had seen back-to-back years of heavy winters, further compounding the risk of landslides and mudslides. “There have been quite a few, and we’re still responding to several, but it’s not as widespread as it has been in past years.” The 1983 landslidesĪround Memorial Day in 1983, the cool, wet weather that plagued Utah for months gave way to temperatures in the 90s, causing widespread floods around the state. “We knew with the record snowpack this year, we were gonna have landslide issues,” McDonald said. While the slides this year haven’t been as damaging as 1983, the uptick in landslides can be linked to the huge amount of snow from this winter, which leads to saturated soil that can deteriorate during the spring runoff, according to a Utah Geological Survey presentation to the Utah Legislature earlier this month.īut given the high snowpack around Utah, McDonald said there have been fewer landslides this year than the UGS anticipated.

This spring has also been wet, and the Utah Geological Survey estimates there have been 80 recorded landslides around the state this year, with eight taking place in Davis County, according to Greg McDonald with the UGS.

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