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A CENTURY IN THE VALLEY
FOOTPRINTS OF TABIONA & HANNA, UTAH
Centennial Book of Histories. July 2005
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Flood of 1963
By Rick Fabrizio
It was Sunday, June 16, 1963, when my Grandfather Charlie Fabrizio
walked across the street from his home to ours in Hanna and told us that
the flood waters were coming. The Duchesne River runs threw Hanna, just
a few hundred yards away from our homes. My Father Tom Fabrizio and
older brother Levere had left a little earlier that morning for a church
meeting, so when Grandpa grabbed his shovel and headed for the river, I
was right by his side. I was 8 years old at the time, but I knew that if
there was something exciting going on, my Grandpa would be right in the
middle of it.
Splash Dam.
Double click photos for larger image.
We walked to the bridge that crossed the river by the sawmill. When we
got there the water was muddy and higher than normal, but it didn’t look
like a flood. As we were watching the water, more and more people
gathered by the river and the river started rising. As it got deeper I
remember seeing a lot of logs and large boulders, and even a dead cow
moving down stream with the strong current. As the water rose to the
bottom of the bridge, the logs and debris start backing up behind the
bridge, and it wasn’t long before the beams that spanned the river began
to crack and the whole bridge broke in the middle and floated down the
river. At the time the bridge collapsed, all of the people had moved to
a safe distance away from the bridge, but there was a dog that had
stayed on the bridge despite the coaxing of many of the bystanders. I
remember feeling terrible as we helplessly watched the dog float away
with the bridge.
As the bridge disappeared Grandpa took me downstream to the second
bridge that crossed the river about a quarter of a mile away. We arrived
just about the same time as the debris from the first bridge got there
and lodged behind it. In a moment, it too buckled under the pressure of
the backed-up water. Three other bridges upstream in Hanna were
destroyed earlier by the flood waters. There was a lot of damage to the
land and properties along the river bottoms with tons of debris piled in
and around the river making it hard to follow its’ banks. Many of the
fish were stranded in little puddles on the river banks and died as the
waters descended. There were also sections where the river had changed
its’ coarse. One of these changes was at our swimming hole by the
saw-dust pile. The river had cut its’ way under the saw dust pile,
floating away a lot of the saw dust and leaving just a bed of rocks
where the river had been. The most tragic thing to happen that day was a
four year-old boy drowned early in the morning up stream by Iron mine
camp ground. Their family had been camping when the flood waters hit.
Luckily others were notified in time for them to get to high ground.
Even the dog that was on the bridge was seen later on that day. A couple
of weeks after the flood a helicopter landed in the field next to the
Hanna store.
It was inspecting the pipeline that runs from the Pump Station in Hanna
to Salt Lake. Grandpa Charlie talked to the pilot and ask if he would
fly him up to the dam that had broken. I was in the right place at the
right time, because they took me with them. From the air it was very
easy to see the damage that was caused by the flood and the path that
the water had taken.
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