She said the group of four men and three women set out Monday before park officials closed slot canyons that evening due to flood warnings. She didn’t have further details.
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A witness described rushing to where the vehicles came to a stop and seeing a gruesome scene of body parts, twisted metal and a young boy who survived the flood.
The flash floods occurred in Hildale, Utah and its sister city of Colorado City, Ariz. The rush of water was so intense it washed two vehicles hundreds of yards downstream. “I don’t mean to diminish 9/11, but this was Short Creeks 9/14 in that it brought us together, we were all the same, seeking the same goals once again”. The majority of the 7,700 people in the two communities are followers of Jeffs’ sect or have ties to polygamy.
The victims in Hildale had stopped their cars at a point where waters from Maxwell Canyon cross Central Street, authorities said.
“In talking to the county emergency people, in all the flooding they’ve had they haven’t had this many fatalities”, Barlow said. The SUV was smashed beyond recognition.
Authorities told local media that six of the victims were children.
The floodwaters swept away vehicles in the Utah-Arizona border town, killing several people.
Another four people have been confirmed dead in Zion National Park to the north.
More than 600 emergency responders and volunteers were involved in the search and recovery effort Tuesday, Washington County Sheriff Cory C. Pulsipher said. “Because of that, we’re bringing the full resources of the state to bear”, Cox said during a noon-hour news briefing in the Colorado City municipal offices, a few blocks across the border Utah shares with Arizona.
Both cities are home to the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
In Hildale, the streets were caked in red mud, and earth movers cleared the roads and piled up mounds of dirt. “Our hearts are broken for the good people”, Cox said.
By Tuesday morning, rescue crews were discouraging residents from joining the search.
Barlow says the flood waters rushed from behind those 16 people and they never saw it coming.
“They didn’t have a chance to live really”, he said. The towns are about 315 miles south of Salt Lake City.
Officials didn’t release the names of the dead or the missing.
A woman looks at a damaged vehicle swept away during a flash flood Tuesday, September 15, 2015, in Hildale, Utah.
The warning said rivers and streams at the popular park and in neighboring Springdale and Rockville are already elevated and additional rain will swell the waterways to risky levels.
The quick moving system on Monday swept away two vehicles, including a van carrying 16 passengers, according to Kevin Barlow, assistant fire chief in Hildale, Utah.
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The couple said Tuesday that residents love to splash in the water and watch as it surges through creeks.
