The flash floods in the Morongo Basin just over a week ago closed some roads, caused power outages, and washed out some yards. But a Yucca Valley family lost everything they owned, including their home, when a wall of mud smashed through the doors and windows of their house south of Storey Park and Juniper Terrace, leaving three to four feet of mud and debris inside their home. Managing editor Tami Roleff met with Tom and Krista Wargo as they are trying to salvage some of their belongings…
Krista Wargo was excited at first when it started raining at her Yucca Valley home September 7. “It started to hail, which was crazy.” Her husband Tom, looked up into the hills south of their house, and what he saw alarmed him. “I saw a wall of mud coming down… I knew it was coming strong enough to go over our little retaining wall.” “My husband comes running in, ‘You gotta get inside, it’s coming!'” Tom, Krista, and their daughter Sophie ran inside their house, but it turns out, that was not the safest place to be. “Seeing the mud coming in, and I’m thinking, oh my God, it’s going to get on the rug, and then all of a sudden, the mud was up to my ankles, and I’m like, forget the rug, at that point, it’s just like, let’s get out of here.” “I’d say it was no more than 20 or 30 seconds the house was filled with four feet of mud, we were wading around in it. All the doors were pinned shut, so we couldn’t get out…. Finally we came out this window right here.” While the Wargos have homeowner’s insurance, they don’t have flood insurance. “He showed us on the policy where it lists everything that is considered a flood; so any rock slide, mud slide, debris flow, every way you could possibly turn it, they had in there.” With the entire house filled three to four feet deep with mud, anything the Wargos can’t salvage and clean is a complete loss—their clothing, antique and homemade furniture, books, Krista’s paintings, and, of course, their home.
If you would like to help the Wargo family, an online fundraising site has been set up to collect donations at gofundme.com/4a04gw. For photos of the devastation, see the family’s gofundme page, or check out this story at KCDZFM.com, or on the station’s Facebook page.
