Signs around the usually dry wash that runs through Hildale and adjacent Colorado City, Ariz., warn motorists to watch for flash floods.
Advertisement
A ninth body was found more than six miles downstream from where the vehicles’ wreckage was located, near the Colorado City airport on the Arizona side of the state line.
Though there are still five confirmed missing people, several were rescued from the mud and debris caused by the water.
Search-and-rescue teams trudged through muddy streambeds Tuesday in a small polygamous town on the Utah-Arizona border, looking for a woman and four children who were missing after a devastating flash flood killed at least eight people.
“They’re getting everybody out, because the car’s about to – trying to wash away”, Wyler said as rescuers nearly knee-deep in racing waters pulled the passengers out through their windows.
The flood “obviously caught these people off guard”, Barlow told The Associated Press. An official said the flooding looked like a “wall of water”.
“Unbeknownst to them, a flash flood had developed up in the canyon and it came rushing down, and it actually came around behind the vehicles and engulfed the vehicles”, the mayor said.
Both cities are home to the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The victims had gone to watch the flood sweeping through the town of Hildale after thunderstorms Monday night when their cars were washed off a road by a wall of water, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.
Most water receded by Monday night as the community continued efforts to clean up and search for those missing.
“This is a 9-11 for our community”, Duane Barlow said, describing the victims as coming from “pioneer stock” who have been in the community for generations. They sit at the foot of picturesque red rock cliffs about 315 miles south of Salt Lake City.
About three hours earlier, the National Weather Service had issued a flood warning for the area, saying: “Move to higher ground now”.
Witness Chris Wyler said rain and hail walloped Hildale within minutes, then quickly subsided.
Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, who was on a trade mission in China, said in a statement Tuesday he was “heartbroken” by the deaths and offered state resources to help rescuers pick through the tons of debris that have clogged Short Creek and which may contain more bodies or survivors.
Advertisement
“This is definitely the biggest flood I have ever seen”, he said. The victims were believed to have been on their way home from visiting a park.
