Residents say flood damage caused by new rock wall

Some El Pasoans are dealing with more property damage than others after last week’s heavy rains.

At least three homeowners on Swede Johnson Street in West El Paso say they feels washed up a creek, possibly stuck with a hefty bill, when they say someone else is to blame.

Those three homeowners are all pointing to an unfinished rock wall built behind their property in just the past year as the source of the problem. Now they have tens of thousands in flood damage.

Water rushed into the backyards of homes in West El Paso on Swede Johnson during Friday night’s downpour.

“It had never happened in all the seven years that I’ve lived here and we’ve had some pretty bad rainstorms and we’ve never had any kind of flooding like this,” said Cindy Garibay, whose home suffered thousands in damage.

Residents say an unfinished rock wall on the Franklin Self Storage property diverted the water, causing heavy damage to three homes.

“By the time I got back to the back yard, the water had already broken through the back rock wall and it was about two feet deep in my backyard,” Garibay said. “It was really scary. The furniture was floating. Huge potted plants were just floating by and then I noticed the rock wall on this side had also been torn down.”

Margarita Mora lives next door. Her home also suffered heavy damage.

“It was so terrible that I thought we were going to lose the house,” Mora said. “I think it was bad planning. I don’t know about the engineers or architects or who did it, but everybody went wrong who had something to do with this.”

Residents say the wall was started in the past year, but never finished. ABC-7 went to Franklin Self Storage, but the manager would not comment.

“It’s a monstrosity,” Garibay said. “I call it the great wall of El Paso. If it was inspected, why was it approved if its incomplete? If f you look at it its not complete. This wall was built to keep the storage units from getting flooded, but now its our problem I guess.”

A City official said they did issue permits for the storage property, which only allowed work to be done “according to code.” They stopped short of commenting further, saying they are looking into the cause.