The wet Utah of 1983 is once again haunting longtime natives of this snow-packed state. Record snowfall is causing torrential speculation regarding history repeating itself once the weather consistently warms up. Will State Street in downtown Salt Lake City become a river again, or will it be far worse? In April 1983, the city sandbagged Ninth East from a conduit break to 17th South, forcing water into a storm drain that later emptied into the “13th South River.” While the depth of the water in the sandbagged channel increased to more than 5 feet in some spots, the flowing water did not indicate that the runoff would ease anytime soon. State Street near Eagle Gate was a river with boardwalks and bridges interlaced over running water. Months of damage control and cleanup followed the soggiest spring in Utah’s modern history.

A Deseret News front page article on May 29, 1983, wasn’t typical of the usual above-the-fold headlining news. It was merely a bullet-point list of the damage wreaked upon the saturated landscape, causing ruin and even one tiny town — Thistle near Spanish Fork Canyon — becoming an underwater ghost town. Homes were lifted off their foundations and carried in the swell of mudslides in Farmington. Parts of I-15 were shut down and diverted onto bypasses due to the freeway being intersected with freely flowing runoff. Every bench town and community along the Wasatch Front was impacted by flooding, mudslides and irreparable damage. Citizens and businesses were left with little to nothing to rebuild.

Residents up and down the Wasatch corridor are recounting memories of where they were and how they diverted — or failed in doing so — flood waters from homes, properties and businesses 40 years ago. Waiting to see how warm weather rounds out speculation takes on new weight as in 2023 we have new tools that add more than just the Farmer’s Almanac of predictions: We can now whip ourselves into a frenzy based on conjecture, opinion, polls, hashtags, gifs, memes and every other ingredient that makes up online modern society. Social media and 24-hour news cycles have ruined our ability to ingest knowledge. With a flood of information breaching our mental sandbagging, where can the average citizen of the state of Utah learn about the state of Utah?

At its inception, the World Wide Web was little more than a novelty in the average American household. A way to dial up and wait for images to slowly creep downward on the monitor from far-flung places, or to enter chat rooms on AOL. The permeation of the internet was inevitable when interconnectivity on a global level became a technological renaissance. The brilliance behind instant intellectual connection was a stark contrast to hefting a volume of the Encyclopedia Brittanica onto a desktop of a library carroll, flipping through the weighty tome to learn about Semana Santa traditions of Seville, or what have you. Remember the awe and delight of the early aughts when YouTube would bring the holy processions into your kitchen, virtually standing shoulder to shoulder with parishioners on a street, from the comfort of your kitchen table! Then society snowballed, as it always does. Why look up the collection numbers within the Library of Congress when I could watch the Kitty Kat dance on G-Shack? Who needs to know the art acquisition totals of the Hermitage … I can scroll through Vines while I decide on my favorite friends list for MySpace! Our wealth of knowledge and understanding through deep critical questioning and research has been squandered as a society over what — debating the downfall of the “Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” and witnessing the real-time implosion of MormonMomTok?

This flood of information has had far more lasting and detrimental effects than lifting a house off its foundation in a mudslide. Our nation is facing the deadly consequences of children raised in the age of the internet and 24-hour information cycles. CDC analyses published on March 22, 2022, shine additional light on the mental health of U.S. high school students during the COVID-19 pandemic, including a disproportionate level of threats that some students experienced. “According to the new data, in 2021, more than a third (37%) of high school students reported they experienced poor mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic, and 44% reported they persistently felt sad or hopeless during the past year.” Children experienced an exponential increase in screen time consumption brought on by quarantines and homeschooling. With no physical connection to the outside world, their psyches were starved for any kind of human contact, which meant more screens. No one needs to be reminded of the proven link between phone usage and anxiety in teens.

Our children are becoming anxious, depressed and disconnected from the flood of information saturating their minds and violating mental boundaries. This feeling of hopelessness is now only exacerbated by the continual link to the outside world that children face daily, as phone usage is implemented within classrooms and families as a means of constant communication. No mental sandbags are available without the assistance of a parent or guardian whose vigilance is equal to that of the technology usage of their teens. We are deep in the swell of information flooding, and the full extent of the lasting damage to our nation’s mental health is yet to be determined.

Ironically enough on Earth Day, houses in Draper that were condemned in October for structural and foundational safety issues finally gave way and broke off a hillside, crumbling and sliding down the canyon ravine while being filmed. The dramatic footage has gone viral across multiple social media platforms, with influencers and armchair experts stating who was to blame, or what. Several versions of the footage were overlayed with town criers pronouncing, “This is it! Here comes the major destruction from the flooding! It’s here!” These videos were quickly snatched up by anyone who wanted relevancy to their opinions regarding the vast destruction we are waiting to witness. A flood of misinformation about what happened gained a strong foothold across the internet. What was the actuality of the Draper houses crumbling? Poorly zoned residential building. Luckily, a few people within the rounds of social media quickly used their platforms to correct what was happening with the Edge Homes fiasco, but the damage had already been done where some will only see what they want — confirmation bias has solid footing on the World Wide Web.

What is to be had about the floods we are expecting in Utah — in the mountains, along the benches, in the streets, in our homes — in 2023?

When Utahns banded together in April 1983, no selfie sticks or hashtags existed. The nightly news clicked off promptly, and television programming was done until the light of the new day. Neighborhoods and communities joined in trenches to create a chain of sandbags and bucket brigades. The physicality of flood redirection and reparation, in its kinesthetic reach, had a lasting impact on memories and streets. Rather than watching comment feeds, we watched the sky. Then we went to work. No opinions. No conjecture. No speculative statements to pin our confirmation bias upon, then festoon our stance while parading along the bridges built over the rivers of State Street. Just work. Repair. Rebuild. Watch the sky, and watch out for each other.

Born and raised under the shadow of Mount Timpanogos, Camille Heckmann is relieved to be back in Utah County. Grad school dropout, former Army wife, mother to four kids and 21 moves during my adult life have provided enough texture to observe and write about the human condition. Divorce and personal tragedy keep the disco ball lit up. ADHD hyperfocus dictates my topics du jour and makes it pretty easy to forget what I’m …

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