Flooding strands multiple cars beneath underpasses

It’s day number two that Idaho Falls has seen crazy weather. Dust storms and damage yesterday, flooding and stranded cars today.

Rain poured down just after 4 p.m. this afternoon, flooding streets around the downtown Idaho Falls area. Business and homeowners did what they could to keep the water from their buildings. Some people ventured out ino the ankle and shin deep water.

The Idaho Falls Fire Department had to perform three water rescues on cars stranded under underpasses. Two of those were at the D Street underpass and one was the Northgate underpass. The man stranded at Northgate said he just moved to the area three days ago, started a new job today, and spent his last couple hundred dollars on his car that ended up submerged in the water. Luckily, bystanders and neighbors were able to help tow his car out of the water.

“When I drove under it just totally bogged out totally died out on me almost instantly too,” Eric Pierce, the man who was stranded under the Northgate underpass. “So, but again, thank God for good neighbors because without him, they’d have towed the car. I just put my last couple hundred dollars into buying it so I would have lost the car. I wouldn’t have, just first day of work, it would’ve been just totally detrimental to my survival out here.”

The city pumped the water out from the underpasses this evening and reopened them after scooping up all the mud.