Homeowners clinging to hope

CEDAR HILLS — Displaced homeowner Wendy Wilson called Friday's hasty exit from her mountainside residence in Cedar Hills "extreme moving" — there was no time to think, no time to sort or write "kitchen items" in Magic Marker on the boxes.

Everything in the Wilson home and three other Cedar Hills homes was moved out and across the road in about 30 minutes. Then it was moved again after officials determined the homes across from the Wilson's might be threatened next.

"I don't know where everything is," Wilson said. "There's some here and some on down. I think my sister's bed is down the street somewhere. I don't know if we'll ever find everything again."

In the aftermath of near-record rainfall, flooding, mudslides and other problems from Utah County on the south to Cache County on the north, attention turned Friday to Cedar Hills. City officials are taking a "wait and see" stance as they monitor a slide that has one townhouse building creaking from the pressure being exerted against its foundation while posing a continuing threat to adjacent buildings.

Cedar Hills Mayor Mike McGee said there is little that can be done until the rain-caused movement of the slide subsides and it is safe for crews to move in to begin removing the sediment. He said the slide — which left a 15-foot gash in the hillside above the townhouse complex — sits on a "slickplain" that becomes unstable when it becomes saturated with water. Experts monitoring the slide fear moving dirt away from the affected building could cause additional slippage, McGee said.

The topsoil in the area is continuing to move, though at a slower pace than was the case earlier Friday. However, the potential exists for it to grow and affect other structures in the townhouse community, McGee said.

Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. surveyed the slide early Friday and said Cedar Hills hadn't been expected to be one of the areas vulnerable to flooding and other springtime dangers.

"Standing on that back porch you can hear the creaking noise underneath us," Huntsman said after visiting the Wilsons' back porch. "This mudslide is giving way at a rate of about two feet per hour. So just standing on the balcony you can feel the creak, the sound of the house beginning to give way. It's a very eerie feeling right now."

Huntsman said the state is doing what it can, including having geologists survey the slide area to provide information local officials will need to determine what steps to take next.

Cache and Box Elder