The following account was written by my father-in-law during his run as Mayor of Salt Lake City. He shared the story with my upon my request and I find it an important story in the Wilson family history:
The flood fight [of 1983 was] two and a half weeks long. On the second weekend, City Creek broke loose and changed from about 90 cubic ft.a second to 360 cfs. It immediately plugged the normal North Temple drain pipe and only gave us a few hours on Sunday to do something. I needed 5,000 people to come to State St. and put up sand bag walls to divert City Creek to the 4th South storm drain, which was clear. I knew no other place to get people on a Sunday than churches. I called then First Counselor Gordon B. Hinckley and told him of the plight. He said, "
Ted, it's Sunday and our people are in the wards." I said, "I know President, right where you can reach them." He chuckled and said, "I'll call you right back." Five minutes later my phone rang. Another chuckle, "The ox is in the mire, we are calling our wards now. Church is over for the day" I also called the Catholics etc. I didn't want people to think I thought Mormons were the only saviors. In two hours, I had more than my 5,000, many of whom still in church clothes. We had few leaders on the street. So the people did it themselves as we dropped the bags. It was not unusual to see a Relief Society president in charge of half a block or so, many with beautiful dresses hitched up. People worked hard all day long to prepare the equivalent of a pyramid in a day. I spent much of the day touring the streets and thanking them. Many said, Hey, you got us out of church! Everyone likes to see the system stop. There was a terrific human spirit to the whole thing.
About 5pm, they lined the streets waiting for their water to show up. The stream was still tricking down North Temple as the pipe slowly clogged. There was a grate in the pond at Memory Grove that was jammed and would not allow us to divert the water to the sand bag works. Kathy called me from the street.
Ted, she said, you're going to be impeached if you don't send water soon. People are lined up on both sides of the street chanting "We want water." I tore off to Memory Grove to see what the problem was. Our crews were working as hard as they could to move the clogged grate. But the cable to the back hoe was at the wrong angle. When I got there, one of my young parks guys saw me, dived into the water and repositioned the cable. The grate suddenly sifted due to his heroism and the water started down toward Street. I later gave the hero a special Mayor's award (for saving my job :).) Water trickled slowly at first and as it progressed down under the Eagle Gate you could hear a loud rolling cheer all the way down State as people got the water they worked so hard for. In an hour, there were rapids running down under Eagle Gate. The next day we built foot bridges at each of the major intersections but the kayakers complained they were not high enough and they had to portage. Before the bridges were complete, Time magazine ran a picture of a young couple just leaving the Temple after their wedding. His Tux was rolled up and his beautiful bride luxuriated in his arms with her train around his neck as we waded to his parked car on South Temple. Another more poignant photo showed a young woman with great arms in a wheel chair in a line of sand bag passers doing her share to pass the bags along.
I still call the whole thing, "The Miracle on Sunday." No one was hurt in spite of thousands of hours of human labor and there was not one drop of water damage anywhere. I later told President Hinckley the people saved the computers in the basement of the church office building. Another chuckle, "If I had known that was an issue, I would have called back in two minutes."
