REXBURG—BYU-Idaho students banded together Thursday night when a heavy storm led to flash flooding in several student housing complexes.
All over town, students gathered, some still in pajamas, many without shirts or shoes on, to help those whose apartments were flooding.
The evening began with light rain, a golden sunset and a double rainbow. Students stopped to take pictures of the sky as they walked home from the gym. Later in the evening, a thunderstorm lit up the sky.
Around 9:30 p.m. the National Weather Service began issuing warnings of flash floods as gutters filled up and parking lots turned into ponds.
The Rexburg Police Department posted on Facebook that Rexburg residents should keep off roads with deep water. They warned that the flooding was affecting their telecommunications and to keep dialing dispatch if residents needed help.
Madison County Emergency Management reported that over 1,200 sandbags were distributed throughout the county.
BYU-Idaho freshman Joaquin Minnick left his girlfriend’s apartment when the warnings began and ran home already fully drenched. He hadn’t been home long before he got a text message from his ward group chat.
The basement apartments at Heritage, where Minnick lives, were flooding. The residents gathered outside to help rescue the girls on the bottom floor.
"The water probably got up to my ankles on the basement floor and then in our yard, it was all the way up to the knees," Minnick said.
For an hour, they worked together, scooping the water out of apartments with whatever buckets, bins or bowls they could get their hands on.
Minnick described realizing that other students might be in the same predicament, so he and three roommates left to go see where else they could help.
“We went to the Birch Plaza and started helping them," Minnick said.
They found over 100 students already at work scooping water from the basement and parking lot of Birch Plaza.
So, the boys kept going but did not make it far before getting stopped by closed roads. The county brought out pump trucks to drain some of the roads and complexes dealing with the flash floods.
Trusting that others were doing everything possible to help, they returned to Birch Plaza and joined in the effort there.
“A bunch of students were there,” Minnick said, “they were jamming to some music while getting the water figured out.”
At Alpine Chalet at this same time, Ace Casos had a similar experience. His ward group chat informed him that an apartment on the ground floor had flooded.
"The bishop immediately deployed with his counselors to come help, so that was really cool,” Casos said. “There was a lot of help. There was a lot of offering to stay in apartments and stuff.”
Casos felt like the whole experience was quite positive.
"I think it says something about the spirit of the school, about how quick people were to help and offer different things, whether that be food, even entertainment and places to sleep. That says a lot about what we have here at BYUI. I can't say that it could be replicated anywhere else, at least in the way that it was here," Casos said.
“That’s the true character of Christ, in my opinion,” Minnick said.
BYU-Idaho Radio has confirmed with residents that Heritage, Alpine Chalet, Bunkhouse, and Parkview Apartments all saw some level of flooding. Other complexes came close, dealing with knee-deep water in their yards, gutters and parking lots. This is not by any means a full list of the complexes affected.
Most of the deep standing water has been drained, but more rain is possible over the weekend, so emergency officials advise East Idaho residents to keep a watchful eye.