Eagle Mountain residents are still digging themselves out of tumbleweeds

By Garna Mejia

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    EAGLE MOUNTAIN, Utah (KSL) — On Saturday, thousands of tumbleweeds blew into Eagle Mountain neighborhoods, rolling into yards and blocking streets along the city’s eastern edge.

“If a home is buried in tumbleweeds 6 feet deep and there are thousands of them, that’s where the city really wants to be of help,” said Tyler Maffitt, communications manager for Eagle Mountain.

Maffit said city workers will clear up debris from public streets, sidewalks and trails, but it’s up to residents to clear their own yards. The city has placed dumpsters in 10 locations to help with tumbleweed disposal.

“If you have just a few tumbleweeds on your property, you are going to be responsible, so ask your neighbors, ask your family, ask your friends to help you out,” Maffitt said.

In some of the hardest-hit neighborhoods, city workers were seen using backhoes to help residents flatten the tumbleweeds once they were in the dumpsters.

“The city wants to be responsive and attune to the needs of residents, so we’ve assigned some of our code enforcement and neighborhood improvement crews to help them clear some of those,” Maffitt said.

Rachel Forbush lives on Carriage Hill Drive. She said her neighbors spent several hours on Sunday yanking the prickly brush from backyards and stacking it on the curb.

“Yesterday, we were just trying to think of what to do, and a bunch of our neighbors came by and asked if they could go in our yard and start cleaning up, and so everybody just walked up and pulled all the weeds that they could and put them out here,” Forbush said.

On Monday, residents were still working to clear the debris, with many homes still flooded with tumbleweeds. Some were still stacked up to the rooflines.

“We have a good neighborhood, and they are really good to us … it just looks terrible, but we’ll be fine,” Forbush said.

Forbush said her family is used to the occasional tumbleweed rolling into her yard, but Saturday’s phenomenon was a new experience.

“We’ve had it where there’s quite a few, but it’s manageable. We’ve never seen anything like this,” she said.

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