Damaging thunderstorms brought heavy rain showers which caused flooding throughout portions of Northern Nevada. Now, residents are picking up the pieces in Gardnerville after flash floods hit the area on Wednesday.
Channel 2 News visited one home hit hard by flooding where almost the entire landscape was completely destroyed. Resident, Mark Bowman spent his day cleaning up his family's property after flash floods ravaged the region. "The creek was just overflowing everywhere and running across the field and almost filling up our house,” Bowman.
Mark says substantial damage was done to their property. "We just planted grass in here and it took it all away. We had a garden in here that was a raised bed garden and it took all of that nice dirt out and washed all our gravel out of there and floated our boardwalk down a little bit,” said Bowman.
Once the nearby stream started overflowing, Mark and his family quickly set up barriers along with more than 350 sandbags to protect their property. "We put boards up against the fence and blocked the flow up and it just kept going around,” said Bowman. "We grabbed plywood. We had a bunch of people grab this big sheet of metal and logs."
His home wasn't the only spot hit badly... There are more than a dozen dip sections, which are low areas along the road in Gardnerville. On Wednesday half of them were completely flooded. "I was at one. It was completely dry, it wasn't even raining at that location but within about 10 minutes we had a 4 to 5 foot wall of water come through,” said Battalion Chief Scott Fraser. "It literally is a flash flood."
Around 10 homes had major damage from this recent storm -- which will cost thousands to clear up. "The Ruhenstroth subdivision, Pine Nut Creek and also over into the Fish Springs subdivision,” said Fraser.
Northern Nevadans are no stranger to thunderstorms. Even though this is the first time flash flooding has happened at Mark's house, he's ready if it happens again.
"Make sure you've got good barriers if you have any waterways around you. Make sure you're safe and prepared,” said Bowman. He also plans to work ahead and do a few things differently, next time... "Probably build barriers up along the creek where it broke through. Keep it where we're on the high side,” said Bowman.
Residents say it could take several weeks before everything is restored back to normal.
