Sewage floods 17 Provo homes

PROVO — When Donna Delabout heard her husband screaming downstairs in their Provo home Friday morning, she feared the worst.

"I thought he was having a heart attack the way he was screaming," she said. "I ran downstairs, and he was on the ground, and he said, 'We're flooded again.' "

The Delabouts were the first of 17 families whose basements became flooded with raw sewage Friday when an obstruction clogged sewer lines for more than six hours.

For the Delabouts, it was the second time in five years that sewage water has bubbled up through drains and toilets in the basement. When fire crews arrived just after 10 a.m., the Delabouts' basement had eight to 10 inches of the murky water.

City workers pinpointed the obstruction just outside the Delabout home, beneath the intersection of Timpview Drive and 3650 North. Crews cut through the road to flush the line and by midmorning, the obstruction appeared to have been cleared, and the muck was receding from the Delabouts' basement.

But problems were just beginning for the east Provo neighborhood, and within a few hours, 16 more homes were flooded to varying degrees with sewage water as a result of a line blockage. Crews pinpointed the obstruction site and discovered the carcass of a dog estimated to weigh between 15 and 20 pounds plugging a manhole access. City officials speculate the dog was purposefully placed in the sewer system via a manhole somewhere above the Delabout residence.

"This dog did not crawl into the line," said Merril Bingham, director of Provo Public Works. "This dog was put in."

Bingham said there is no open access at any point to the sewer line in question. He said someone would have had to remove a manhole cover and throw the dog in.

The timing of the clog was ironic, Bingham said, because just last month the city cleaned the line along 650 East where the blockage affecting the Delabouts occurred.

Officials believe that after crews were able to clear the original blockage, the dog was swept about three blocks southwest and clogged the line at another manhole.

It was at that site crews discovered that it was a dog carcass clogging the line. A worker had nearly freed the carcass when rising water forced him out of the manhole where he was working and pushed the dog to another manhole at about 3300 N. 500 East.

It took more than three hours to remove the dog as sewage water seeped into the basements of nearby homes.