QUEEN CREEK, AZ — The monsoon storm that plowed through the southeast Valley late Friday night left significant damage behind.
The owners of Schnepf Farms tell ABC15 they haven’t seen or felt a storm like this in 17 years.
“It’s a farm, so we don’t have insurance for this type of damage,” said Mark Schnepf, owner of Schnepf Farms.
Touring Schnepf Farms Saturday morning, several trees fell victim to last night’s powerful monsoon storm that tore through the iconic farm and shut it down for the day.
“When you have a farm of this size, 250 acres and thousands and thousands of trees on it, we’ve got at least 30 to 40 trees that are down, power lines, parts of buildings. It’s gonna take a while to get cleaned up,” he adds.
What was most worrisome for Mark Schnepf was a wedding that was being held at the farm when the storm came through.
“We had a wedding going on at 10 o’clock when the power went out. They were [in a] big red barn where we do weddings,” Schnepf added.
Fortunately, no one was hurt.
Around Queen Creek, multiple viewers sent videos to ABC15 showing uprooted trees everywhere, block walls torn apart. One home received so much damage, the owners are calling it a total loss.
At Schnepf Farms, it’s the crops like tomatoes, squash and peppers that took the worst beating of all.
“We have five out of eight greenhouses that have damage now,” he adds.
With trees now down over things like rollercoasters and the train tracks, the days ahead will be spent cleaning up, so that they can reopen sooner rather than later.
“It will be tens of thousands of dollars to get it all up and running,” he added.
