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Sam Penrod ReportingThe National Weather Service today issued a flash flood warning for areas of central and southern Utah. The watch includes Eastern Sevier County where Richfield has some problems.
The water has been slowly rising here for the last three or four days, but then yesterday Richfield got more than an inch and a half of rain, and that's sent the water level here even higher. Now at least a dozen houses along Glenwood road are surrounded by water.
One of those homes belongs to Gwen Roach, who got a call at 4:00 in the morning Tuesday, warning her that water was getting close to her property. Now you can see that there is a good two feet of water surrounding her home, in fact it looks like her house is sitting on a lake.
But unfortunately, even with sandbags, water has been able to seep into her home's crawl space and even into a storage room. Now she and others who live along this road are just waiting for the water to go down and desperately hoping that the water will start to go down.
Gwen Roach, Flood Victim: "It's lake front property, if anyone wants to buy it, I'll sell cheap. Lake water right up to my back door all around my house."
Mark West, Flood Victim: "Each day it's gone up a little more until we got what we got right now."
Eight county roads are now closed, due to the high water, and in some cases where water has washed bridges away. At least seven thousand acres of farmland in Sevier County is now underwater from the Sevier River running over the banks. So, for an area which depends heavily on agriculture, the damage is substantial here.
It appears that the water is not getting any higher, so that is some relief to people here.
