The river, which looked more like a wet blanket than the normal low-water creek it is later in the season, surrounded the home of Adela Fuentes. She and her four children watched from their front porch and windows as volunteers trudged through the front yard, covering red tulips with gray sandbags to divert the brown floodwater.

Approximately 18 inches of water had seeped into her basement, Fuentes said, with her 9-year-old daughter, Jessica, acting as an interpreter. "I hope nothing happens to us," she said. "This is our only place. I don't know where we would go. This is bad luck."

At least several dozen other homes throughout the county had flooding problems, ranging from a few inches of water in cellars to levels up to the foundation line, said Cheshire, who headed the emergency command offices in Logan.

The Blacksmith Fork River was expected to peak around 10 p.m. Thursday, and the Logan was to hit its high mark near midnight, Cheshire said.

Richmond, north of Logan, was another major trouble spot, Cheshire said. A culvert broke and flooded three homes. Soon after, volunteers placed 700 sandbags to direct the water. Late Thursday, a canal overflowed its banks.

U-23 along the west side of the county flooded in places, Cheshire said, and had been cut through to form an escape channel for water.

Elsewhere, a bridge above Avon in the far southeast of Cache County, washed out. Consequently, the Porcupine Dam Road was closed indefinitely, and Cheshire's team was monitoring debris in the tributary, which feeds into the swollen Little Bear River.

Firefighters from eight of the 12 volunteer fire departments in the county were called to sandbag, pump water and direct volunteers, said Jon Keller, the assistant Cache County fire chief. "They took the whole day off without pay or wages to help their citizens," he said. "This is just one more thing they respond to."

Additionally, nearly 1,000 volunteers, including inmates from the Cache County Jail, were used throughout Cache Valley and northern Utah to stem overflowing rivers, creeks, streams, canals and irrigation ditches. Many of them waded through thigh-deep, frigid water in flip-flops to reinforce sandbag walls that flows quickly outpaced.

"It was study for finals or save someone's house," said Tiffany Pack, a senior at Utah State University, working with mud on her shirt.

The mood among the volunteers in Paradise was friendly and lighthearted, even as they worked to bail out people stranded in their front yards and vehicles parked in ditches.

Skylar Scheele, 5, splashed around in her rain boots and sweat pants while her mother worked with other volunteers to keep water out of a corner house.